High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

What torpedoes Build a Nation is the heavy cream of reverb and echo that drowns the vocals.

Without outside direction, however, Dr. Dog quickly go back to their old ways. Afrobeat specialists Antibalas provide the horns on B-Room, but their talents are wasted on songs like "Long Way Down", the beginning of which sounds like the Wayne's World dissolve tuned to a baritone sax.

Whether autobiographical or artistic, As If Apart is a powerful, exquisitely realized journey, the sort of bummer that sounds strongest in that alien hour between when you’re supposed to fall asleep and when you should be jerking awake.

Let's just say Tower of Love isn't out to offend or challenge or discomfit anyone. But the album's less simplistic than it comes on, obviously, its snugly melodies decorated with snaking structures and surprising instrumentation.

Even with its increased focus on classic-rock virtues, the album isn't really a collection of riffs and wails and choruses; it's more a muscular sort of vibe-out-- badass ambient music, if you will.

Ultimately, it's the dynamic between melodic resonance ('Young Diamond') and found-sound obfuscation (the four minutes of 'You Are a Force' are pregnant with stay amp hum) that defines a debut that I'd call "promising."

Even more so than their promising debut, Staring at the X proves them to be a commendably ambitious band with the chops to carry out even their most far-flung ideas.

59.59 could use a few more fiery moments like these; as the album settles into its more temperate second half.

They’re the sort of tunes that the Keys can pull off with ease, as satisfying as a perfectly tossed curveball landing in a beaten-up catcher’s mitt. But they also make you wish the Keys didn't spend the rest of Dropout Boogie lobbing underhand pitches right down the middle of the plate.

As producer, songwriter and persona, Dear has come into his own with Asa Breed, a bootstrapping album that not only reveals the miles walked, but an ambitious road map ahead.

This mix might not help the Rapture pass every test of the best club DJs, but when it comes to maybe the most important one--the ability to make clubbers push their way to the booth and breathlessly ask for the title of that amazing cut they just dropped--they've done their studying.

While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs.

Corrosion of Conformity does overstay its welcome with a couple of second-rate tracks, but overall, the album manages to both recapture Animosity's feral energy and reach compositional peaks that the 1985 versions of Dean, Weatherman, and Mullin couldn't have accessed.

These lush arrangements seem content to simply drift by, never truly engaging the listener, and making it difficult to fully appreciate the album if you aren't in the mood to be put under.

Every track is memorable, though rarely on a musical level.

Sometimes erstwhile obsessiveness can lead to revelation, but beyond the fancy engineering, I don't see much of that here.

This is a great album to throw on when you need something to enhance the mood or otherwise fill the air when working on something else.

Neil Young set the template, but Tillman puts his stamp on every note, wringing bare-bones poetry from evocative couplets.

Milwaukee at Last!!! only seems broader than it is: Almost every track, it turns out, is from Release the Stars, and the audience doesn't seem to mind.

Watching Movies with the Sound Off is a quantum leap in artistry, but it’s not without faults; the album’s about three songs too long, and a couple of the tracks in the back end just plain run together.

Anno has the feel of a speed-dating workshop. You can’t deny anyone’s enthusiasm or ingenuity in the venture. But, looking at the results, you can’t help but wonder if everyone’s energy was best spent elsewhere.

Magic Ship cuts a path between beauty and meaning. Though Mountain Man’s radiant harmonies are as pretty as they come, there’s still considerable weight to the shiny package.

CHORDS is a strong, occasionally astonishing next step.

It can feel like discovering an old roll of film in a vintage camera, or like going to a dive bar and messing around with the jukebox. While it aspires to be the heart on your sleeve synth pop of the past, it’s most successful as mood music to soundtrack the present.

An unshowily eclectic record warmed by the glow of new love, is the group’s third and strongest album since signing to Fire Talk in 2021.

Let's hope Magic Chairs is as much terminal as it is transitional, meaning that next time, they'll get all of that grandness right.