He sounded breezy and at ease [on 2014's "Good Kisser"], finally confident enough to date women his age. So it’s a little disappointing that on Hard II Love, Usher’s eighth studio album, he hasn’t managed to hang onto that effortlessness. But there’s plenty to like, starting with his voice, which sounds better than ever.

It's a sad case of an artist forgetting what makes her great, settling for what makes her merely good instead.

The four-track fidelity and crowded mix don't give her the space to fully command your attention as she does in concert.

Songs this bitter demand catharsis, but nestled in its pop cocoon, that side of Hatfield's story instead gets stifled by the soft bomb approach when what you really want is for the singer, once and for all, to explode in rage and break something.

Coming on the heels of the beef, though, the regionality of the album seems more like an elaborate gotcha to Drake rather than a musical pivot sparked out of passion. That missing spirit is in the production, too clean and synthetic.

Ali's focus on his inner landscape is the rapper's greatest asset and his biggest liability.

The guests regularly outshine the hosts, but each has a variation on the sort of rugged, gruff flow that doesn't leave Erick or Parrish gasping.

Deep Fantasy captured the ferocity of an absurdly tight band playing together in a room, thrashing against the walls and playing off each other’s anger. That ferocity has faded. By contrast, Premonition sounds like talented professionals working remotely.

Fascinating as it is to hear the full text of these articles aloud, the prose doesn’t have quite the same supple musicality as previous Richter sources like Franz Kafka’s journals or the letters of Virginia Woolf. After a few times through, the primary text of Voices starts to take on the rigidity of an employee conduct handbook from HR.

McCauley’s raspy crow often overwhelms the more delicate material, but throughout both albums, the band varies its rhythms and arrangements with surprising agility.

The 22-20s evade most of the typical British rock potholes (i.e. histrionics, pretentiousness, unapologetic 60s-aping, among others), and can actually be taken at face value.

Instead of catering to fans of that slow, sultry earlier work, she's brought in old and new songwriting partners to help her craft a fast-paced, upbeat pop album.

The Strange Boys have proved to be great attention-grabbers but seem a little lost when things get too quiet.

She hasn’t yet sorted out the particular combination of influences that fit her strengths, and few of the songs’ melodies are compelling enough to overcome the album’s strangely stale take on alternative pop.

He struggles to let his guard down, and ironically, operates best when he keeps it up. Tiller comes off not as the passionate lover, but as the sappy everyman—too bland and full of tropes to be the new hero pouring his heart out in a thunderstorm.

To make the personal sound universal is no small feat, but there’s a fine line between universality and sounding like your songs could be anybody’s.

Heard as individually and spaced many months apart, the best tracks here were diamond-hard realizations of very specific sonic ideas; placed on an album alongside songs that use similar ingredients but are markedly inferior, they rattle around in the can, perfect objects in search of the right container.

Though the album doesn't work in many places, it's a laudable attempt to mix together two styles which are, at first appearance, utterly alien to one another.

Make no mistake, the record is extremely endearing and flawlessly constructed-- it's just hard to love an album that has a dazzling surface and not much underneath.

If the younger Black Francis might have transformed a cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Wheels" into a cool surf epic rather than a Velvet Underground-inspired reconstruction, the elder delivers an intriguing mix of vitality and cool detachment. It's easy to take those seemingly at-odds qualities for granted, but here Black Francis sounds not just comfortable with that aesthetic but surprisingly and paradoxically in control of it as well.

While not guilty of carrying any true bombs, Lightbulbs does reveal how the band's stand-offish approach can serve as both a safety net and an anchor.

Both Lights may be plenty gorgeous, but in Wyland's never-idle hands, that beauty proves fleeting.

Inner Fire's biggest problem is a sporadic lack of energy.

These are pleasant songs, but Twain and Lange’s perfectionism meant even the weakest cuts on The Woman in Me and Come on Over were weapons-grade pop.

Unlike 2015’s Pagans in Vegas, where the band went fully synthpop at a time when seemingly 75% of the music world population was doing the same, Art of Doubt is decidedly rock: guitar and bass loud in the mix, first riffs in the first seconds.

We Knew It Was rarely evinces the same boldness, proffering instead a steady procession of jangle-fuzz jingles that yield moments of brain-massaging beauty (the gleaming outros of “Song From a Short-Lived TV Series” and “What Gets Me By”, in particular) but little of Surf City’s more combustible qualities

There’s a lot going on at high volume, each track barreling into the next with minimal interruption, and the longest reprieve comprises two minutes of droning strings on “Wall Facer,” just before the album ends. ... Blood Karaoke is no less exhausting an experience, albeit far less addictive, and though the sheer volume of content makes it a consistently interesting listen.

Precipice is not without excellent hooks, and the ones on “Crying Over Nothing,” “Not Afraid,” and “Heartthrob” let De Souza’s star power shine through. But when a record’s great moments are just that—moments—waiting on them is tedious.