The biggest hitch is that Electric President seemingly achieve all of their humble goals by mid-album, and so spend almost half their time with pencils down, repeating the day's assignments silently to themselves.

La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive.

Taken for what it is--a fluffy, animated unicorn flying joyfully to college-rock Pleasure Town--Out of View is a nice 40-minute respite from reality.

The new songs point in some directions Butler might go in the future: the raw heavy metal riffing of “Public Defender,” which is simultaneously bracing and ridiculous; the homemade ‘80s soundtrack rock of “Sun Comes Up,” which sounds like a Moroder sequencer held together by duct tape. But that quest for pure spontaneity can reveal the cracks in Butler’s craft.

Starboy, by way of contrast [to Trilogy], feels more like an opportunistic compilation of B-sides than an album. Who is the Weeknd? At this point, even the man behind the curtain might not know.

If their debut fails to offer a consistent, forceful message the way their riot grrrl heroes once did, they have at least figured out how to capture some of those predecessors’ energy. For now, Dream Wife leaves you revved up and ready to go with nowhere suggested.

The separation anxiety that Freaky induces is its unfortunate undoing, though we can least be glad that someone had the good sense not to include dialogue interludes for context's sake.

His bars vary from the goofy (“She made me bust a nut, that’s a starburst”) to the confusingly profound (“Time is poured on me when I ride that Maybach”), but it’s his ability to apply his signature inflection to just about any rhythm he conjures up that can make Drip or Drown 2 nearly hypnotizing.

Cunningham's perplexing persona has always been overshadowed by his ability to confound us with his records; Ghettoville, disappointingly, shifts that balance.

For All My Sisters is a scruffy, buzzy and very hooky guitar album that doesn’t quite scan as "punk" or "indie".

Phédre is the sound of a band trying to do too many things at once in too short of a time.

I prefer to think of Lookout Mountain as an album of pretty-good songs from a guy who has written some unbelievably great ones, and will, more than likely, write some more of that quality down the road.

Fewer generalities and a more interesting narrative would have gone a long way: For all the sharp, intriguing musical experimentation, the lyrics are too easy to forget.

Considering how he and White have a past history of collaborating, you'd think that Guilty Simpson and White would be firing on all cylinders by now; instead, the Detroit hardhead unfurls cliché after cliché and drops vague, autobiographical teases that don't reveal much in particular.

For the most part... the seemingly endless boundaries and subtly propulsive rhythms draw the listener into an engaging world of manipulated samples and shimmering loops.

It’s a proudly ugly Frankenstein, an LP that clambers along at a fitful pace, stopping for the occasional smoke break.

No No No may sound ineffectual after a cursory listen, but it reveals some subtle pleasures if you keep it in rotation.

Decent as these tracks are, the rest of the album never quite lives up to 'Shampoo's' potential.

No song here is outright bad, and much of their best assets shine through the banalities, but Queendom feels like a signpost of Red Velvet’s former glory.

You're left wishing the album drew a little more blood.

G-Eazy is at his best when he steps out of the shadows and raps assuredly, and there are signs of that on When It's Dark Out.

The only problem is that the rambling approach that let Smith get these things out has kept the results from being all they might have been.

As a sit-down listening experience, the album frequently feels too repetitive to remain consistently engaging. Still, taken as a microdosed jolt of electronic psychedelia, a song or two at a time, Translate has the potential to lift you up, out, and beyond, to a better, stranger place.

They don't have the lyrical complexity of the bands that they will be compared to (from a young U2 to the aforementioned Frightened Rabbit), but they do have the energy and that's a promising place to start.

Though 7s is a step down in scale and inspiration from Cows on Hourglass Pond, the triumph of Time Skiffs means it’s hardly a worrying sign for his career.

A record with infernally catchy dance-pop hooks and the nutritional value of cotton candy.

At its best, Giving the World Away locates the edge between noise and melody, carving out a pop core amid seemingly structureless arrangements. ... Occasionally, the deluge of instrumentation grates. ... Despite its flaws, Giving the World Away marks an exciting evolution for Hatchie.

All the emotions Bridges mines in looking back are flattened into another textural element in the mix, a move that results in an album as comforting as a cool summer breeze—and just as ephemeral.