What once was exciting is now a bit boring, and it’s hard to say exactly why. Stott is still a wonderful sound technician of unerring good taste, but something seems to go slack at the center of Never the Right Time.

Kazuashita ends up saccharine and pompous, like music designed to soundtrack bad wildlife documentaries. Thankfully, these missteps are rare on an album that proves Gang Gang Dance aren’t so much of the moment as of a different moment, an alternative and rather more pleasant one.

In fact, despite the thoughtfulness of the arrangements, it quickly becomes clear that nothing truly surprising will ever happen.

It's here we enter the world of the tame, a land where Sting is king and Phil Collins is raucous.

On My Way is a far less goofy effort than 2002's Sha Sha, and suffers remarkably for its comparable lack of inanity-- no longer powered by the youthful glee of his solo debut, Kweller's hooks sag and fade, contrived and loose.

Good as some of these songs are... they're not quite enough to foment a revolution

Phantom Island is freewheeling and ambitious, and mostly admirable for it. Pared back slightly, it might have been truly absorbing.

None of the songs are simple, and they mostly all build to surprising and surprisingly weird heights.

Beats-first, lyrics-second people have enough here to return to, and lyric freaks know there's plenty here to unpack.

Unfortunately, The Art of Hustle is mostly forgettable as a major-label rap record, but it bears out a teachable truth about Gotti's career: sometimes showing up is more than half the battle.

Mergia’s power to transfix seems to grow with the more collaborators he has, and their addition does not detract from his resolute sound.

You Can’t Kill Me is at its best when it offers surprising, welcome wrinkles to Shake’s sound.

When No One Is Lost tries to blend in with the youth, Stars sound like professors rather than participants.

For all of the stylistic hopscotch being played, the individual songs on Nebula Dance cohere into an impressively solid whole.

Life & Livin’ It signs off with a stiff jab to the nose, hinting at what could be if Sinkane’s next journey takes them deeper into the mud.

While Blue is thoughtful and beautiful, it’s a drag to sit through. The interludes have more personality than the full-length songs.

Rain Before Seven… is designed to feel hopeful and positive, reassuring rather than challenging: music for the world that should or could be, rather than the grim reality. But it’s ultimately a vision of a heaven where nothing much happens.

Antenna to the Afterworld may have all the dressings of science fiction and fantasy, but like many great works in those genres, it's a strong, emotive character study.

An album this guileless is bound to be polarizing, for the very fact that it resolutely resists the urge to provoke.

Whether the album achieves its titular synesthesia is debatable, but Bell Orchestre tap into a wide, mesmerizing range of the spectrum.

That the least interesting material falls to the back is unfortunate, because most of the album is engaging.

On Asking for Flowers, she sounds better than her peers for being so much braver.

Though Lamkin's monotone voice is not the most expressive instrument--it barely wavers whether the occasion calls for a Monks-style organ vamp ("Move Along") or a prom-night embrace ("Mexico")--each album side gradually ratchets up the tension and releases it through a raucous rave-up ("Pull Out" on side A, "Parasites" on side B) that successfully bridges the Soft Pack's Nuggets-schooled ethos with the modern-day discord of San Diegan patron saints Hot Snakes.

II is just about perfectly synchronized with the zeitgeist, and if it’s not a flawlessly executed record, it still seems capable of making the most out of its moment.

Chorus, Herndon’s new two-song EP, essentially amplifies the extremes of her musical personality and pushes the tension almost to the breaking point.

There’s no laundry list of injustices or outrages to be found here: just an uber-compressed pop rune that muses on the sheer, disorienting helplessness that results from realizing that we’ll never be able to help everyone. Maybe, just maybe, stolid songcraft can be rescue enough.

The album’s first half sounds relatively strong. ... But No_One Ever Really Dies runs into a wall midway through, as old ideas rear their heads like those nobbly-headed creatures in Whac-a-Mole.

Despite some interesting accoutrements (tasteful trumpets yay, bombastic strings meh) and some game attempts at eclecticism (acoustic pluck wicked, piano ballad oh geez), Stars of CCTV is of a part with the varied guitar-driven stuff that their fellow Mercury nominees-- Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, etc.,-- have offered folks this past year.