Walk Thru Me’s idiomatic alt-rock composition feels too stable to properly channel it. At their best, Barlow and Davis wrestled with seemingly opposing interests in the primal and futuristic: After a long period of inactivity, they’re still finding their footing in the present.

All That Must Be doesn’t quite live up to its own heartstring-tugging goals; too often, it’s just kind of comfortably glum.

Even though the record is irresistible at times, it's also a feedback loop of nostalgia that's creaking as it turns.

It’s a perfect union if anyone finds the former too glossy and the other too gritty, but in occupying this middle ground, nothing here would qualify as potentially divisive protest music. In fact, there’s nothing divisive about Twentytwo in Blue at all.

Yet unlike the more cohesive albums from those aforementioned acts, Immolate is a one-step forward, one-step back proposition, marching in place to an internal setting somewhere between chilly background mood and something more melodic and engaging.

It's all about finding the friendly turtles at the end of the druggy rainbow, yet, since no one's in a hurry to get there, the songs loop along with space between the beats and guitarists who still seem to be learning their craft.

Icarus Falls, as a high-concept pop album, is fine. It shows off Zayn’s reluctant charisma and love-song-ready voice amid R&B ideas that are fully immersed in the present, for the most part for the better.

The bulk of Bad Cameo’s novelty arrives, instead, in songcraft. To Blake’s credit, he’s a master of seeing tracks as living things, subject to as much growth and meandering as the masterminds who make them. Familiar as they may feel, the most striking songs on this project keep some powder dry, sprawling into realms far beyond their starting places.

So Wildlife isn't exactly bursting at the seams with earworms, but it's a worthy achievement for taking a poignant, powerful emotional state and carrying its thread for 42 minutes.

What a pity, then, to find the band more or less dozing off after their spectacular opening tantrum, drifting aimlessly in a space-rock black hole for the bulk of Interiors.

The band's now-routine gospel-like chanting grows tiresome by album end (they miss Vanderhoof's vocals), and, as was expected, Set ‘Em Wild doesn't necessarily expand the band's sound so much as further splinter their interest.

There are triumphs here, but they're modest; there is, after all, little fanfare to be found in just getting up and on with it day in and day out. Consequently, Teeth Dreams--even more than the flavorless Heaven Is Whenever--occasionally feels like the first Hold Steady record that's just going through the motions.

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.

Franz's music is usually as crisp and tight as its constructivist cover art, and though reformatted, stretched out, and slowed down on Blood, it still maintains a strong pulse.

With the exception of James Blake’s “Colour of Anything,” which here sounds like an outtake from the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, Morrissey and White fare better with the more recent material than with the old.

It's understandable if Clipse no longer feel like they have to actually prove shit to anyone, but perhaps that's why Til the Casket Drops awkwardly vacillates between confidence and complacency, between sneering at perceived competition and smarting at perceived and possibly self-made slights.

The Golem is not a Pixies album, but it is a Black Francis record that walks and talks surprisingly well even without the master text of its film.

Deathfix gets its expansive, laid-back feel from the relaxed conditions under which it came together, but that's also the source of its occasional directionlessness.

For every moment that Sov's supreme wit and impeccable cadence is fitfully showcased on Public Warning!, there is a moment when her gifts are squandered amidst anxious beats that try to compete with her huge personality.

Individual moments shine throughout FORGET: a stunning chorus here, a stirring lick of pitched percussion there. But the album’s strangest attribute is the way it can lull you into a state of absentmindedness regarding those same charms.

I Want You to Destroy Me is solid as far as debuts go, though it offers the all-too-common letdown of hearing music that’s superficially loud and aggressive, yet feels like it’s doing so little to actually stand out.

The abbreviated runtime of Places Like This makes it seem as though they could have given their ideas more space to breathe, rather than piling them up like a stack of pancakes.

Time has allowed Nada Surf to uncover the truth in the trite, but it has also eroded some of the band's personality.

Smile is their exquisite-corpse sequel, a near-automatic exercise in drawing inspiration from anybody but themselves.

Another Fine Day offsets some of what it lacks in freshness with aw heck poker-night camaraderie.

The songs he summons from the synths offer proof that there were more songs left in him, but he's still digging in the same mine. Ad Infinitum might be the sound of an artist challenging himself, but it's not the sound of an artist challenging his listeners.

Here they sound like they’ve settled into their status as a reliable indie rock institution. Strangers to Ourselves is a pleasant album, and one that completes their transition from "inspired" to "sturdy".