Empire is a wonder of absurd tricks and unforeseen turns, but the ultimate goal--rendering its music as something more than just a side platter to gripping TV--proves elusive.

Whether this breakthrough portends a change in course remains to be seen, but, at this point in their consistent-to-a-fault career, it's encouraging to hear Wooden Shjips draw the emotion out of their motion.

Some of the songs are undercooked, or at least they begin to feel that way as the grooves stretch out past five minutes.

After the Party might actually be too well-designed for jukeboxes, as the relentless, face-to-the-glass production results in the sad cowpoke shuffle of “Black Mass” and the Meatloaf-inspired “The Bars” clocking in at about the same volume as everything else, denying a dynamic range that’s needed on a record that lives up to its title by sticking around one or two songs longer than it probably should.

Entergalactic is an unusual addition to Cudi’s discography, a small statement from a rapper who prides himself on big, aimless ones. It doesn’t wallow. It doesn’t rage. It just sort of lingers pleasantly. It’s the easy hang that Cudi usually works so hard to deny himself.

Buried under the fluff somewhere is a good album.

Let’s Try the After may be inspired by forward movement, but it feels directionless, preoccupied by searching without clarifying what was lost.

These 11 songs feel like a loose mixtape, flitting among a half-dozen moods and motifs in what feels like a methodical quest for streaming placement.

Pixx is at her sharpest when her doubt and discontent are animated by something more acute.

His best songs put his ruminations on spirituality, family, loneliness, and humanity at the center, but here he sounds like the only thing he’s surrendered is his spotlight.

Aerotropolis' 180 pop move--as comfortable and assured in its own niche as it is--is so abrupt that it almost feels like an innovative rulebreaker hitting the reset button and starting a completely new, much more familiar persona from scratch.

You crave a little more wreckage in their wake—a more wanton relinquishing of control, perhaps—but their abundant debut more or less lets them have their cake and eat it.

V is a perfectly capable record, one that showcases what we’ve come to expect--and in many cases, enjoy--from Williams and his band. Even so, you wonder where else they might have gone.

Kind-hearted and disarmingly earnest, Doiron's music remains as resistant to curmudgeonly critique as it is to over-exuberant hype.

The result is something that sounds like three session players and lacks the presence of somebody to step up and take this beyond being merely a decent, functional collection of songs.

Despite a handful of highlights, Beauty Marks is marred by filler, moving between frothy pop-R&B and stale empowerment anthems that leave Ciara’s talents largely underused.

Despite some missteps, Halsey’s appeal is clear: It’s a singularly difficult time to be a young person, and she is warmly attuned to that reality.

Tiptoeing around already familiar ideas, the album’s first half never finds new footing.

For those who grew up worshipping at the altar of such ephemeral sounds, a record like Depersonalisation is a welcome bit of gloom, even if it ultimately feels like a record you probably already own.

That's How We Burn's sonic normalcy would all but consign the record for the used record bins if this band didn't sound so damn good when they break out of the mold.

Hidden Vagenda is elegantly constructed and outwardly naive, but it lacks a consistent underlying honesty.

With Teeth manages to flip the script on Reznor's recent M.O. Instead of fronting like a more feminine Al Jourgensen-- hard, coarse, yet not totally abrasive-- Reznor comes across as the masculine yin to Shirley Manson's alluring yang: playful, coy, and with a flair for the dramatic.

Albums like this, while often appealing to the hardcore Farrar fan (redundant, I know), don't add much to his overall cache.

The tracks themselves are, per Reznor and Ross's pedigrees, immaculately pieced together, richly detailed and suitably moody. Maandig, however, continues to stick out of this mix.... She still hits all the right notes, but brings a generic prettiness to her delivery that doesn't gel with the moody futurism going on around her.

From snaky power-pop to piquant autumnal balladry to the gospel-y back-and-forth of the title track, Electric Trim is a rangy but fluid record, constantly in rearrangement, rarely the same from one moment to the next.

TRE3S, their third long-player (released by the Canadian supergroup's Arts & Crafts imprint), finds them continuing to home in on shapes and textures of their own.

Their latest, ...And the Ever Expanding Universe, gets grandiose in nearly all the right places; it's the singing part of the songs that could use a little beefing up.

The musical arrangements are just right, consisting of his usual assortment of electronic instruments and percussion that sound like broken toys. Hearing these tools applied in the service of well-written pop songs would be divine, but the melodies, as performed by the speech synthesizer, just aren't moving.