While Wasting Light features a host of worthy set-openers, few prove to be as sticky or memorable as any number of their previous singles.

An album that turns out to be a lot more idiosyncratic than its coffee-chain marketing plan suggests.

It's a well-crafted record that's lyrically dwarfed by the old emoting masters.

Their career arc since 2001’s Beautiful Garbage suggests that wobbly songwriting is as much a tic as their masterful studio expertise. The cult still thrives, and we’ll happily settle for Let All We Imagine Be the Light—until the next album.

Normal Happiness is a slightly-above-mediocre release from an artist who never dared to be mediocre; just inconsistent.

Not to get all protectionist here, but it seems pointless to import so many 1960s-mining indie rock outfits to America when we've got plenty of perfectly good 60s-mining acts right here at home. Yet Norway's I Was a King offer a welcome twist on the same ol'.

Sometimes erstwhile obsessiveness can lead to revelation, but beyond the fancy engineering, I don't see much of that here.

At more than three hours long, Music for Animals is difficult to digest in its entirety; there’s a fine line between patient and dull. Frahm’s extended track lengths are presumably meant to foster immersion, but after a while, they come to seem indulgent.

72 Seasons, at a marathon 77 minutes long, delivers everything you could possibly want from a Metallica album in 2023, and so much more on top of that. Too much more. Like Hardwired, its predecessor—the same length, incidentally—72 Seasons is both a thrill and a slog.

Mercy is studiously lovely, like a brochure for paradise, and over its course it begins to feels like a sunset in Grand Theft Auto V: beautiful, but a replica.

The Brooklyn-based foursome spends a lot of time here style-pinching, connecting dots already drawn by contemporary indie acts. And yet Miniature Tigers are often able to pull it off.

Though Non-Fiction only occasionally rises to the high songwriting standards of Ne-Yo’s seamless 2008 album Year of the Gentleman, it does correct some of the faults of his last record, 2012’s R.E.D., where the R&B songs and the Euro-dance songs played as if they’d been written for entirely separate projects.

Obviously, Twista's not breaking down any walls with his wordplay on Kamikaze, but along the way he kicks over a few garbage cans while letting Kanye West, Toxic and the rest of his production crew move some crowds and elevate their status, one slow jam at a time.

Too often, she jumps to John Hughes-isan climaxes without laying the foundation that would grant them the proper emotional heft. But Kristi shines as a guitarist and a composer; even the sternest skeptics might be forced to headbang once the power chords crash in on a particularly distorted chorus. Beabadoobee needs to punch up her script, but the set is perfectly lit.

There's a proficiency at work on Feel Good that's undeniably impressive--it's an album full of musicians who can play and they approach this stuff with an endearing alacrity and a willingness to let Syd do more this time around that will pay dividends on future records. She's still got room to improve where lyrics are concerned.

SOL has less gravity when it steers away from its majestic solar themes and tries to put its abstract sensations into words. Eskmo's vocals, while delicate, still feel intrusive.

The problem is that Melidis’ ear for busy atmospherics and his desire to say something deep don’t quite mesh; this music is like that huge spinning wheel on "The Price Is Right"--efficient, colorful, deadening.

Rudimental are casting a wider musical net than their peers, which has the unintended effect of magnifying their flaws by comparison, making for a decent but ultimately second-tier effort in a crowded year for big-ticket dance-pop.

Though the lyrical themes may lack potency, Thunder Follows the Light highlights Lee’s knack for composing beautiful melodies.

On My Way is a far less goofy effort than 2002's Sha Sha, and suffers remarkably for its comparable lack of inanity-- no longer powered by the youthful glee of his solo debut, Kweller's hooks sag and fade, contrived and loose.

Strip the clever vocal snippets away from Vibert's productions and you're left with those choice drums and goofy melodies, but there's little beyond that to mind.

There are isolated moments here and there, but even when when they strike an appealing note or two, the Free Nationals never come across as more than a backing band missing its leader.

Fortunately, Winehouse has been blessed by a brassy voice that can transform even mundane sentiments into powerful statements.

Perhaps counterintuitively, Being is most compelling as a pop album when it’s not trying to hook you; the rest is promising, but perhaps could do with a little more dementedness.

This a pop album, produced like pop and structured to grant instant gratification. And yet, this presentation throws the flaws of Tokyo Police Club’s dullest songs into sharp relief.

Transatlanticism dulls the edges of their usually acute divinations.

The strangest thing about Loose isn't its irregularity, but the simple fact that this doesn't sound like Nelly Furtado at all.

And while, at times, Momus constructs a bitingly clever post-modern take on folk music, Folktronic has an unfortunate tendency to choke on its own concept, rendering the album a bit hard to swallow.