The tracks here are supported by a fuller sound and more complex arrangements than on either of Travis' first two albums.... They're all competently played, but never really inspiring.

Nothing mind-blowing here, just an efficient EP filled with enjoyable music.

Tittsworth has produced, by and large, an album of potential novelty singles. That's fine--you can argue that some of the best records are novelty records--but the problem is that most of the tracks on 12 Steps are neither particularly novel nor memorable.

While his prodigious talents as a rapper ensure you might enjoy Saaab Stories on a purely musical level, it’s unlikely you’ll feel better when it’s over.

This group is wise and capable enough to eschew nearly every shortcut of today's personality-first music culture and dial into the silence between the noise. It's what confidence sounds like.

Marks the first time the band's sound has taken a step backwards.

It's probably the best thing Defever's ever done.

What's most remarkable about this album is, despite the high gravitas of the subject manner, it still manages to capture the yearning and imagination of youth, and never loses touch with the redemptive qualities of interpersonal connectedness.

True to its title, Voices in a Rented Room is modestly scaled and simply structured; the tone and form established in a song’s first verse don’t change by the time we reach the third. But even within these confines, New Bums rarely retrace their steps.

Tennant slaps his heart on his sleeve and gets on with things. The result isn't awful, although none of it is as spooky and playful as the cover of the Passions 'I'm In Love With a German Film Star' that the Boys produced for Sam Taylor-Wood last year.

Good Evening is minuscule and precious, both of which are charming descriptors, but its fragility is taken to an almost palpable extent.

Rather than dismiss Just to Feel Anything as a mistake, perhaps it's better to think of it as a mixed detour, one that some of the band's followers might in fact welcome.

Concrete and Glass won’t shock, sparkle, or challenge cultural norms, but it’s a (mostly) lovely place to inhabit.

Aside from "Valkyrie", Together is a solid collection of well-crafted songs. However, in spite of the quality, the album isn't entirely satisfying.

Late in the record, the perky "You Know" also stands up to the quality of jj n 2, but between these tracks is mostly B-side fare. It's a shame, but I don't get the sense listening to jj n 3 that jj's best work is behind them.

Appealing and in tune with admirable influences but ultimately lacking the sort of unpredictability or drama that can make these the songs that saved your life rather than reminiscent of ones that can.

All My Relations makes a few nods to conventional songwriting, but, really, it’s just as dense and repetitive as anything the drummer has ever put out.

BRMC is a big, dumb band who writes big, dumb songs.

When left to his own devices—as on the chopped-and-screwed “Roll” and the Jersey club-indebted “Pure Gold”--Girl Unit rests on formerly niche sounds that have been adopted by more mainstream-facing artists.

A radio edit of the title track tacked onto the end serves as an unintentional critique of Half a Human—it’s just too easy to remove the two minutes of synthesizer drift and end up with a perfectly enjoyable Real Estate song about the deceptive nature of passing time.

It's a true departure in sound and method; this is not a lazy or complacent record. McPhun, though, never settles into these new sounds, and Fight Softly retains very little of the ease and abandon that, to date, had marked the Ruby Suns.

It’s full of bulletproof hooks and sticky turns of phrase. But in committing to a more conventional form of superstardom, Swift has deemphasized the skill at the core of her genius.

These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within.

Given its one-off status and unique format, Are You In? is probably a diversion rather than a reinvention, a mixtape-style curio given big business backing, but hopefully some of its reinvigorated sonics find their way to the next proper De La Soul album.

The most compelling section of “Anomaly” is the first, one that Kotche realized electronically instead of with the quartet.

Braxton has evoked the spirit of ’90s R&B without ever sounding like she’s simply throwing out nostalgia bait.

The highs are high and the lows are subterranean at best. And that’s that. .... Luckily, Neil Young is so damn good at what he does that even his most hurried material leaves room for some genius.

On so sad, her traumas are too often muted by abstraction and unspecificity. Li is clearly an artist of stormy passions—four albums in, she still seeks the flood of love before she reaches for the life preserver.