Watersports sounds terrific.

More often, though, lyrics fall somewhere in the middle, neither particularly offensive to one's sensibilities nor particularly inspiring. But again, it's how An Horse use their chosen tools that makes the difference.

It's a welcome reminder of this band's current status, because one hopes that Do Whatever You Want All the Time isn't an end, but another new beginning.

eter Murphy’s once again located the razor-thin line between restraint and complete unhingedness that he hasn’t walked since Bauhaus’ first time around, and following his recent exploits has never felt more rewarding.

For now, Careers stands up as a testament to the power of serendipity and a decent first effort from a blooming young songwriter.

There are brief glints of enlightenment to be heard here, but more often than not, Laraaji’s makeshift songs come across like daily affirmations as heard in a hotel lounge.

It’s an overridingly pleasant listen, but that pleasantness is too often maintained by featureless production and other manifestations of Misch’s risk-averse instincts.

For the most part, they sound like they’re having more fun than ever.

His score is only one small part of the movie’s audio track, a subtle human presence within Reichardt’s typically rich palette of natural sounds.

While it often sounds like Kehlani is trying on a series of flashy outfits to see which one fits best, it’s still exhilarating when Crash dials up their signature swagger.

Even at a lithe 31 minutes, it serves as Hecker’s most diverse work, an unfixed landscape that moves from shadowy to frigid to transcendent with ease. The song titles and album notes leave no real clues as to which films each track was actually intended for.

Blue Roses makes it clear that Groves is inordinately talented and working with big portions of audacity and acumen.

The remixes feel equally vital to the EP, because after all, the great appeal of Major Lazer is watching these dancehall concoctions transform, as elements of dub and hip-hop and reggae are also smashed into one freaky, juiced up mutant (kinda like the fictional Major Lazer himself).

So while I'm Gay isn't a definitive statement, it is an especially compelling point on a bizarre trajectory, one that feels worth keeping around.

Mostly there's a strong sense of discovery, of someone attempting to make sense of their surroundings, with Brooks cast as a voyager trampling through vast stretches of the British countryside, crisp leaves crinkling underfoot as he expertly funnels everything he sees and feels into song.

Though it’s laced with "Twin Peaks" references, Charmer ends up sounding more influenced by another example of uber-90s television--the one where people stop being polite and start getting real.

After a while, even unremitting noise and relentless nihilism becomes rote and, frankly, kind of boring. Without the occasional beam of light, it's hard to actually appreciate how dark--or how good--a band like HEALTH can actually be.

Like Hercules’s first two records, Feast transcends mere homage not only through sonic innovations but by the quality of the emotional connection it makes with its audience.

Instead of the earlier sample-heavy style, Barber incorporates more live instrumentation, and as a result High Places feel more like a band.

Hold it by its edges and the experience of this album suffers––the rocky center is where we find personal truths writ well.

While there's nothing here that suggests Berninger and Knopf are truly incompatible, there's equally little evidence that Knopf's spirited arrangements are suited to Berninger's spotlight-gargling word soup.

As much as the singles on Something thrilled, it struggled for coherence from song to song. The songs on Moth feel related and extroverted, pulled together by a common purpose. They have a charming asymmetry, they drift in sometimes oblique and irregular patterns. This is pop that wants to show you what it’s made of.

At 33 minutes, Power Chords is about twice as long as the typical Mike Krol record, but it’s also his tightest and most frenzied work yet.

The Durk-Meek Mill team-up “Bougie” lacks chemistry. Sleazy sex jam “Extravagant” comes close, but it’s held back by Nicki Minaj’s ill-suited bombastic verse and a few laughable Durk one-liners. Culling these missteps would have helped the tape’s batting average, but they can’t mask Durk’s undeniable strengths.

Yet no amount of reverb-drenched vocals, acid-flashback harmonies or Hammond organs can prevent The Bees from being a bunch of blokes from the Isle of Wight who happen to have better record collections than songwriting abilities.

We're Animals still has haywire guitars, bushwhacking rhythms, and those homemade synthesizers we're always hearing about, but the real story is the band's conflicted strategy for melody.

Angel serves as a balm in another era defined by mass pessimism and doubt.

There are enough nods on Kiss All the Time to Styles’ stated influences—-a sharp, craggy synth running through “Season 2 Weight Loss”; chattering drum machine on the bittersweet Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix-ish highlight “Taste Back”—that you can at least identify his intention. (This isn’t Dua Lipa talking up a Britpop album before delivering nothing of the sort with Radical Optimism.) But Styles undermines himself every time with moves straight out of the stadium-pop playbook.