[“Soft Power” is] an engrossing, haunted fable, a way to link society’s obsession with conspiracy to our basic needs for security and comfort. It’s proof that Tropical Fuck Storm are still clever when they want to be, able to channel obsessive rage into real insight. Braindrops could’ve used more like it.

Always the intrepid mind, Fink has found a promising partner in LeMoyne to bring out her weirder side, and once they do away with a few lingering old habits, the duo could prove an artistic pinnacle for both parties.

Jackman. takes creative risks in social commentary that often pay off.

Maddeningly inconsistent.

For now, Careers stands up as a testament to the power of serendipity and a decent first effort from a blooming young songwriter.

If the stories are slightly different, for better or worse, the song remains the same.

No peaks, no gorges, just a steady oscillation between adequate and inspired.

Delete two-thirds of I’m the Problem, whose back-end filler tracks are not even worth noting (save for the bizarre “Miami,” which sounds like a The-Dream song for the Don’t Tread on Me set), and a more interesting album emerges.

There’s no telling where these well-worn songs will go next. In this sense, the album--as much a kind of private sketchbook as anything--is curiously in keeping with his photographs. Even in music, he rebels against the obvious.

It's all pleasant, but when it's over, the only truly memorable song is "Wave Forms."

Repetition is key to this music, but after several cycles, tracks begin to plod, broken up only by Khan's vocal work. The Sexwitch interpretations lose vital elements from the originals like horns, organs, and bells.

It's another merely fine, expectation-meeting entry into Boratto's discography, a stopgap until the next knockout single comes along.

They've developed a larger musical vocabulary, but the results can be cumbersome.

Caleb Landry Jones’ music inspires a reaction somewhere in the middle: It’s interesting, even fun while it lasts, but you probably won’t return.

Madness is a spacious and satisfying record: what it lacks in standout moments, it makes up for in coherence.

Blake is fighting the respectable fight on Enough Thunder, though the EP's totally bass-less tracks show that he needs dubstep as much as dubstep needs him.

Their voices complement each other so naturally and so gracefully that it’s easy to forget how much craft there is in these songs, and how much ingenuity they put into their vocals.

Roll with the Punches never falls, or even falters, exactly; it’s just a series of punches, whether of the clock or in the air, landing with consistency and specificity and only occasionally drifting into anonymity. To paraphrase Morrison himself, it doesn't pull any punches, but it doesn't push the river.

Free Your Mind manages to be Cut Copy's most homogenous and it's most "message-based" record yet, and in doing little other than turning on, tuning in and dropping out, there’s precious little separating it from the vapid electro-pop to which Cut Copy used to be an alternative.

His vocals are becoming more textural and less the main focus. That actually works, as Crown has his smartest writing in years, keeping his youthful demons alive, if not running amok. He may have matured, but we don’t want to him to grow up.

A fairly nice little slab of French Anglo-pop, and pleasant reading accompaniment if you can reach the skip button from where you're sitting.

The group's clearly more concerned with making great sounds and creating a distinctive vibe than they are with making lasting statements.

While the album isn't arranged chronologically, listening to it as such reveals the series of intuitive leaps between lo-fi bedroom folk that emphasized monotonous gloom and cacophonous samples to comparatively laid-back country biased toward majestic arrangements and electronic beats.

If Ida's sound is like a river, the emotions the band conveys are simply stagnant.

Younger’s familiarity with her harp opens up many avenues, but Gadabout Season settles for following what’s by now a familiar path: that of the skillful and charming contemporary spiritual jazz record content to linger in the background.

There are a few key moments of guilty pleasure, and the overall aesthetic of the record is appealing on the surface. But underneath the scratchy record sounds and the canned Casiotones, Fountenberry hasn't got enough substance to sustain him for ten minutes, let alone the length of an entire album.

It might be subject to less scrutiny had it not followed Interstellar, but then again, it might not be subject to scrutiny at all, and simply filed away with any other competent and unexceptional dream-pop.

On the whole, Ounsworth’s candor gives New Fragility a necessary charge as he leans into balladry.