It’s easy to understand why Young felt these songs didn’t fit in with the lovelorn mood of Are You Passionate?, but they’re all worth hearing at least once.

Beck has been working on Colors since 2013, and by the sounds of a recent interview, spent a lot of time trying to get the balance of “not retro and not modern” just so. He more or less nailed that bit, but what’s lacking from his Big Happy Pop Record is some kind of strong emotion that could elevate these songs above the “well crafted but innocuous” camp--something more than an idea.

The best songs on Conversations point to a viable middle ground where earnest delicacy and shadowy tones co-exist, but the band has yet to fully explore that realm.

Rumors buffs away some of the rougher edges that made her so much more compelling than so many of Nashville’s aspiring singer-songwriters. Those albums made the fight sound worthwhile, but there’s too little fight in these songs.

If Sheezus was Allen at her most ironic, Allen’s new album marks a return to sincerity--and its assessments of motherhood, failing relationships, and infamy are penetrating. Sadly, these potent themes are often diluted by antiseptic production.

It's the stay-the-course dancefloor material that proves the most rewarding.

It's best to think of Prins Thomas not as a speedbump but as another iteration, slightly undercooked, of his still-developing style.

Rodriguez is an excellent songwriter when she’s on her game. ... It’s frustrating, really: a hugely talented songwriter and producer, thwarted by trends.

When Cut Copy take a step back from the small details, forget about their perfect record collections for a few minutes and actually expose themselves as human beings, they hit on a sound that really rings true.

There’s nothing wrong with creating a club LP, but when you stack it up against TJM’s other, more adventurous albums, the consistency can’t help but drag.

The band's longtime devotees will find plenty to love here, but the album isn't memorable enough to make its way into most people's heavy rotation.

Saltwater is a pretty record and the songs are clearly heavy with personal significance, but it was almost better when they were a little rough around the edges.

It seems particularly odd that for all the time and sweat Stoltz has put into this music, there's no sense of a real person behind these songs, just a tightly wound bundle of ideas borrowed from likely pop sources.

Unlike ...For the Whole World to See, N.E.W. does not sound like a lost proto-punk classic; it's just a pretty good rock record made by guys who have been at it for a long time.

At its best moments, Sounding Lines drifts in an intriguingly ambiguous space where each member invokes the genres they’re best known for playing while bending generously to accommodate their partners.

After five albums, it’s nostalgic sleight-of-hand for the Go! Team to continually look back on the sounds of the ’60s yet still tune out the underlying noise of that radical decade.

If it's possible to go through the motions while still mostly shouting, Ferrari Boyz would be a prime example.

Not the Actual Events turns out to be so slight, at just five tracks with no dramatic shift in form. It’s the least essential non-instrumental album the band has released.

As a whole, Have a Nice Life stands as a decent collection of songs that, while palatable, casually floats by in a sea of average beats by Jesse Shatkin, who produced much of the album.

His new band might not question him very much, and they may play better or more professionally, than his old crew. But Oceania suffers a kind of rock-star-dictator airlessness.

The album awkwardly divides in two: the first half showcases Wiles' forward-looking tunes; the second takes a brief historical look at his dated earlier work.

Though it rarely makes good on the promise of her earlier songs, Cheap Seats is polarizing, and by now most listeners will have already decided whether or not they can stomach Spektor's peculiar kind of verite, glass-half-full optimism.

As it stands right now, though, it's a nice bit of gauzy, gray-hued racket to throw on when you've only got so much attention to give.

The samples and some of the lyrics feel a little too controlled, on-message, and conceptual, which is unusual since her songs often tease out the dark emotion in mundane, everyday moments. As a result, No Elephants often feels hermetic and occasionally impenetrably austere.

Listening to M. Ward is nowadays perhaps more deeply pleasurable than it ever has been, with glistening strings and big slabs of piano occupying more and more of the terrain once almost entirely populated by his nimble fingered guitar, trashcan percussion, and creaky room noises.

On her new record, luck…or something, she’s as familiar as ever. That’s largely because this is music you’ve heard before: fizzy, centrist pop, precisely positioned at the crossroads of autobiography and universality.

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

Each composition is fleshed out as well as it can be, the end result still a kind of Appalachian wallpaper music that after further inspection and subsequent listens, leaves the record sounding much more flimsy than urgent. What impression it leaves doesn't last.