Another Country just isn't nearly as consistently satisfying as Merritt's earlier offerings.

The visual [video] gambit falls uneasily between a critique of hip-hop’s relationship with corporate sportswear brands and, once again, a flimsy attempt to muster up attention. Pure Beauty plays out in a similar fashion, committing wholly to neither SHIRT’s appealing raw rap chops nor his grander concepts.

Consistent, concise and stylistically compelling, Hyperview is a good set of tracks, and a worthy crossover attempt at that, provided you’re OK with consulting the lyrics booklet and willing to take a ride on the undertow.

Despite the overt bleakness, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack shines when Mellencamp invites other people into his world—proof that he can still surprise us this deep into his career.

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.

The eccentric versus the consummate professional; the maverick versus the safe bet. Yet for an album called Hyperdrama, actual tension—the kind of friction that once made Justice’s music feel so vital—is otherwise frustratingly hard to find.

Circular Sounds can feel impersonal, especially in how Stoltz hopscotches from voice to voice, some far stronger than others.

It is slightly bizarre to hear aging punks perform the songs of their youth, music that would become foundational to scenes that produced the likes of Blink-182 and Weezer. But as the missing link that connects Descendents’ humble beginnings to their most iconic sounds, it’s essential.

The majority of the record's new tracks need to either be more focused or show more dynamic range.

The Coathangers keep the back-alley post-punk party going strong on a scratchy, shrieky, foul-mouthed sophomore album, Scramble, their first for Seattle-based Suicide Squeeze.

Teenager is gloomy without feeling fatalistic; melodic without feeling facile. For the Thrills, a quick locale change has managed to yield impressive results.

"Why Did You Leave Me' and 'Can't Say Goodbye' are some grown-up songs, and Snoop probably has a whole album of them somewhere in him. But as long as the pothead-pimp shtick keeps selling, we'll probably never hear it.

The kicker is that, without their live/electronic shtick to distinguish them, Midnight Juggernauts don't seem to be anything other than gifted mimics.

Let It Beard's structure, its scope, its knowing nods to an earlier era's excess.

Aside from a few ungainly, obvious missteps--trying to play the Scott Storch melodic game on 'Amerikan Gangster,' wasting the KRS run-in on a track that sounds like a D12 refuse pile ('Sex, Drugs & Violence')--the album is finely sequenced.

There are plenty of great tunes here, just not much character. Lollipop's as catchy as your average power-pop record, but still hardly as essential as the band's peaks.

Red Fang certainly sounds good on Whales and Leeches, with the production of the Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk again giving their instruments ample breadth and weight. But they do not match that surface with substance.

Tracks such as “There Was a Button” and “Traanc” are acceptable as minimal-house DJ tools, but as greater parts of a long-playing whole, they seem lost for a broader context--a context Dear previously had no trouble offering. Only at Alpha’s tail end does Audion’s (and Dear’s) personality assert itself.

That was a problem on Psutka’s last couple of albums, too; his concepts are stronger than his editing skills. Still, taken in moderate doses, it’s a strangely moving portrait of ecological collapse translated into sound.

Die Lit is an anomaly, an album that works almost completely from its own lunatic script. At its best--which is to say almost the entire thing, really--the album almost seems to suspend gravity.

Working within a framework isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are cracks in the formula. Mostly on the production side, which is incredibly played out. ... Still, even with the stale sound of the album, Durk is such a complex and colorful writer that it’s worth it to stick it out.

Whether it's the lack of plot, insight, or collaborators, Achilles Heel also finds Bazan's music stuck in a room with no exits, with one loping distortion-pedal crawler after another.

This album features perfectly serviceable and perfectly competent, middle-of-the-road punk rock music that probably sounds much better live than it ever could in a recording studio.

Lady's is a well-trodden field and, at times, their lyrical tropes are overfamiliar to the point of feeling vague, if not downright lazy. So Wray and Walker distinguish themselves by amping up the charm and cheeriness to the max.

Ava Luna are an exhilarating live band, and Electric Balloon is the first thing they've done that comes close to bottling that energy.

Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context.

For YG, an artist we’ve come to expect the unexpected from, someone currently standing at a career-defining intersection, Stay Dangerous is an exercise in predictability.

Really, if your parents don't dig this, there's something wrong with them. This is music for the drive to pick up the kids from soccer practice, or to the doctor for dad's yearly prostate exam.