Broken by Whispers shimmers and glitters, alternating from hushed ambience to ringing guitar and synth interplay.... The songs on Broken by Whispers are resolutely catchy, simply bogged down by tried-and-true heart-on-the-sleeve sentiment.

Heaven suffers because its settings imply a compositional weight that the songs just don’t carry; Fear has a clearer sense of itself as a collection of shiny amusements.

Early highlights aside (particularly the bone-rattling 'Paul Revere'), much of the album could be written off as cruise-controlled and that feel definitely resonates.

At its best, this music feeds into a similar sentiment, pushing close to the kind of deep introspection at the heart of Jarmusch's films.

They are a powerful outfit, and Subjective Concepts is cohesive and fierce.

On Tiden it's mostly pretty easy to pull apart tracks and figure out who did what, although there's never a feeling of two figures resting on their laurels.

That inferiority complex and desperate need for approval keeps L.A.X. surprisingly entertaining even though there are far more weak tracks on it than good ones.

If the herky-jerky new-waver 'Total Bloodbath,' and the 'Ticket to Ride'-styled charmer 'Partner in Crime' find Reis comfortably adapting to the pop approach, the mix can also leave Reis hanging out to dry, particularly on the smooth '70s-Stones strut 'You've Got Nerve,' where the droning qualities of his rasp are overemphasized by a chorus that simply repeats the title ad infinitum.

Rejoicer is a quality album with some especially strong tracks, but as much as it is refreshing to hear a relatively young band nail sounds from a previous era, the record is more enjoyable than it is interesting.

So while softer and more empathetic the band isn’t quite tamed yet; On Oni Pond is a Man Man album through and through, delivering an occasionally bizarre and fantastical look at the very real human condition.

Her supple singing and the lively production keep Jupiter from being a slog, but the hazy symbolism sours the experience.

As captivating as Cain’s mood-setting can be, Preacher’s Daughter is such a slow burn you periodically wonder if the flame is even still lit.

BENEE gets better results by dropping the cutesy affectations. When the pace slows down, Hey u x strikes a balance between whimsy and moodiness, particularly on “A Little While” or the Frankie Valli-alluding ballad “All the Time,” a duet with New Zealand newcomer Muroki.

As on that album ["Loveless"], the songs feel like they're whirling so far into the stratosphere that they might fly apart any second.

On this one, they fall short of reinvention, which also means they are still—improbably, unmistakably—Pearl Jam.

Civil War shows a band that's matured in some typical ways-- as if anyone was clamoring for "broadened perspective" from these guys-- and some unexpected and not unwelcome ones.

While Deacon’s instrumental command has demonstrably strengthened in the past few years, his lyrics have only gotten more pat, as evidenced by two songs near album’s end.

It's a series of vignettes and at its best it reminds me of amorphous copy/paste artists like Prefuse 73, musicians who wormed their way into a genre by nibbling at its edges.

Pop-metal, stoner rock, doom metal—whatever amalgam of buzzwords you favor, on Admission, Torche remain a reliable supplier of grizzled riffs to test the low end on your stereo. The stylistic guises don’t always fit, but that’s a function of the group’s creative restlessness.

Across Parallels, he seems so committed to the possibility of an open-ended project that he gets lost in the mix—where once he was a maestro of controlling space. Still, these subtle and intentional shifts suggest Chung could make a more focused album in the future, if only because it will be coming from a clearer headspace.

Every part of Life Processes seems meticulously calculated with such antecedents in mind, laid out in every detail and implemented exactly to referential specification.

Break Up the Concrete seems a bit uneven: The faster numbers begin to sound the same after a while, and the album hits a slight lull halfway through.

The Singles traces both Can’s genius and how they ultimately ran out of ideas, losing all of their Vitamin C.

There are a handful of moments here when he turns himself inside-out over the course of a song, bringing him into the orbit of those artists he so obviously idolizes. Now he just needs to figure out how to emulate his starting position.

Even as she extends herself as a songwriter, and as she grows more comfortable in the spotlight, she hasn’t found a way to build on the full extent of her mystique.

Far be it from me to criticize happy endings, but in musical terms, a comfortable, even-keeled existence sometimes comes out as isolated and ordinary art.

The lack of freshness is most apparent on the disc's instrumental tracks, most of which sound like hand-me-down versions of the micro-carols on Mum's Finally We Are No One.

Part stage-managed pop crossover and part pretty-good gay Sheryl Crow record, BITE ME never quite convinces you that it’s got something new to share.