Despite occasional flashes of inspiration, much of the record blends together into a whole that is somehow much less than the sum of its parts; the ingredients are colorful, but the end result is disappointingly dull.

Even when an experiment comes up short, mistakes and failed attempts allow us to see others as the messy, raw, difficult humans we know ourselves to be. Truth or Consequences is more like a Valentine’s Day card—pleasantly sentimental, at times gratifying, and all too easy to forget.

Car Seat Headrest is a band almost predestined for the kind of high-stakes storytelling a rock opera requires—if only Toledo could let his own ideas breathe.

So Relayted is both better than it had any right to be, given the concept, and about as good as you could expect from the musicians involved.

There are boring Foo Fighters albums and pretty good ones; C&G is a pretty good one, and in two years there will probably be another.

The record's easygoing pace, sturdy songwriting, and sunbaked production make it the third solid effort from the Sunsets.

LNZNDRF is a fine-if-flawed testament to the company's Thatcher years, but it could have been tremendous if they had kept it strictly instrumental.

There’s no question that Jepsen can write songs that transport you—to the heat of the moment, the late-night neon glow, the driver’s seat on the way out of town. With a more defined roadmap, the whole album might have led somewhere worth sticking around for a while.

While the sound on Grandfeathered is deep, it often feels impenetrable rather than multilayered.

Even the prettiest BROCKHAMPTON songs can feel cramped, but many of these songs, though each endowed with their little moments, are disorganized or inefficient.

Invitation depends on its lack of surprise. In its clean, straightforward grooves, the album betrays no cynicism or enervation. It is a good time, and not much more.

For Ween newcomers, FREEMAN is bound to sound odd, even off-putting. I get it. But this is the promise and labor of appreciating a lifelong cult artist like Freeman: taking the time to engage him on his own terms.

Within its limits, the album is fairly diverse, though after so many records, the style might be wearing a bit thin.

Unfortunately, this big-tent spirit also occasionally dilutes some of the elements that made K'naan's debut so striking.

The ten tracks here are all honest executions of a sound that was essentially perfected ten years ago; nostalgia alone can’t justify how little legitimately new material MSTRKRFT bring to the table.

A Cross the Universe isn't close to anyone's definitive idea of what a document of a live Justice show should be, but it's a diverting, sometimes-bizarre look into the first phase of fame for an aughts-era cult pop phenomenon.

The goofball virtuosity of these tracks is fun if not especially memorable. Where Everybody Loves Sausages hits hardest is when the Melvins assert their personality on the material, rather than vice versa.

The rapping on GHETTO GODS features less filler and empty showmanship than EarthGang’s past releases, but their writing remains anonymous.

Fighting Demons is too polished to be considered a total flub and its heart is in the right place, but it’s difficult to look at it as anything more than another product falling off a long assembly line powered by dead rappers.

Its 11 tracks are crawling with morose R&B melodies that feel beamed from Take Care’s deleted scenes, almost capturing the fun multi-regional slant of 2020’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes. But Drake’s writing still feels smoothed over and starved of evocative detail. His ideas oscillate between half-baked and colorful, saved by a few spurts of inspiration.

The record's violent, revolution-themed artwork is misleading. Viva is more like a bloodless coup--shrewd and inconspicuous in its progressive impulses.

Aisles is most endearing when it leans into frivolity, largely because there’s little else with such relaxed stakes in Olsen’s discography.

By Morissette’s standards, Pretty Forks is a vulnerable, sedate, ballad-heavy album. Most of those ballads are unobtrusive, with songwriting-template piano and strings plush and regular as amphitheater seats.

While not necessarily essential to the UMO catalog, Hanoi finds the band reveling in its psychedelic roots and exploring a primeval darkness that their songs often only hint at.

Freeze, Melt nods to the conceptual artist John Baldessari, whose death at the start of 2020 might have warned us of the waves of bullshit to come. Its own concept is unimpeachable: Climate change does suck. Ice is a memory. Mostly, though, Freeze, Melt just feels like a nice warm bath.

When they go for manic instead of mellow, Canyons do bring something new, even if it's just intensity, to the 80s retro party.

Despite her obvious skill and charisma, some of the album’s 11 songs are burdened with overwrought production, awkward turns of phrase, and ham-handed rapping.

All Things Will Unwind, both suffers and succeeds in relation to its scope.