As usual, the feeling of her vocals is more compelling than its literal meaning. These opening songs are strong enough. .... However, by the time we get to these songs towards the end of the album, the fatigue of listening to familiar riffs and howls starts to set in. Playing Favorites is at its best right in the middle.

Night Moves rely on the sound that got them signed rather than pushing themselves in a new direction, and the results are not as exciting as they could've been.

Summer is a season of extremes—exhilaration and malaise, heat that can feel more oppressive than the cold—and All Worlds is best when it leans into them.

By sticking so closely to the script laid out by their debut, II is the one thing punk rock should never be: careful.

This is Ducktails’ most discriminating and tasteful album, but the project is at its best when there's a certain amount of exploration even within its narrow parameters.

What Abstract does bring to the table, though, is an ear for sticky, misshapen melodies and a rap producer’s sense of pacing, which keeps Blanket moving so briskly that its periodic clumsiness doesn’t bog it down much.

Some minor touch-ups would have gone a long way. Had Sprout tightened a few loose screws here and there, it would have told us more about who he is now.

Rose Mountain might be Screaming Females' most deliberate music yet, but it lacks much of their former wildness.

Absent the verve and pop of UMO’s previous work, V can feel remote and insular without the charm of being coy. There’s just enough shown here to leave you craving a more direct experience of the world Nielson is spinning.

Nearly every highlight, however, feels hermetically sealed--produced in a vacuum and unable to feed into or connect with the others. It turns Song for Alpha into a catch-all for Avery’s disparate experiments, something that less resembles a fully realized album than a dynamic, robust playlist from a seasoned DJ taking a break from the road.

These songs are great showcases for the group’s range. Though they seem to have settled squarely in the neon haze of the dancefloor, they’re more truly in their wheelhouse in these mellower moments. Sequencing, though, is a problem. Too often, the record plummets from a sugary adrenaline high to a last-call ballad.

The word "caramel" is most readily embodied by this music's sensual, flirtatious leanings. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems to just mean "slow", i.e. the pace of swimming through caramel.

These ["Maria," "Sick of Sittin’" and "Fall in Line"] are sturdy moments on an album that feels less like an end in itself than a promising first step toward a genuine pop rebirth—moments that are strong enough to inspire hope for Aguilera’s own The Velvet Rope or, at least, My Love Is Your Love. She has certainly still got the range.

The album aims for instant gratification and achieves it so efficiently that it can’t help but burn fast.

Even as excess weighs down Jonny, the album still glimmers with beauty. Pierce’s depictions of raw, strange intimacy have long distinguished the band’s music, and Jonny’s core scrutiny of trauma and its aftermath plays to his strengths.

At 40 minutes, Walk Around the Moon is a brisk reverie—and their shortest album ever. That cutoff means their zesty solos are shorter and moments of all-in instrumentation are subtler. When they do go for it, Dave Matthews Band might be having too much fun.

Concrete and Glass won’t shock, sparkle, or challenge cultural norms, but it’s a (mostly) lovely place to inhabit.

The first seven songs kill, but the album's second half drags on longer than a Def Jam debut.

Crystal Antlers' proper debut is, more than their EP, the sound of a band still with more potential than goods.

While the first 20 minutes supply an appropriately cocaine-like high (with the requisite comedown), what's really missing is the debut they somehow skipped over, one where they could've showed where their passion comes from, rather than merely being actors in a Hills-hop hybrid.

They're sticking to their M.O. of repeating a single odd musical or lyrical phrase ("I did crimes for you, they're coming true!") again and again until it sounds like a hook; beyond that, you can tell that they're trying to wriggle out of what they've been doing in the band's previous phase, but haven't quite figured out what comes next.

Instead of the modern Stardust, Serpentine Prison is merely a prolific musician’s stopgap.

The record is an easy, pleasant listen, but it's not particularly compelling as a whole, occasionally falling into a pattern of contented stuffiness.

It is a graceful but slightly anticlimactic grand finale: a victory lap over well-trodden ground that eagerly commands the spotlight before it goes out for good.

There are times throughout Iteration when Haley sounds trapped in the same old rut. Overall, though, the album balances between bombast and gestures that are a little harder to read. That contrast gives Iteration a texture that’s missing from previous Com Truise releases.

A well-polished album that sometimes feels perplexingly one-dimensional.

Unsurprisingly, Rademaker makes his mark when he forsakes goth-rock and embraces his jangle-pop roots.

Die Cut / City Planning feels like a record without a center of gravity, no matter how enjoyable the drifting may be.