With songs that play like a grab-bag of genres and lyrics that have little of the humor or self-awareness the band displayed in the past, it's hard to muster the patience to uncover anything deeper.

Adios sounds more like Hola. Nearly 15 years into his career, Branan sounds like he’s finally found the right balance between audacity and subtlety, between humor and heartbreak.

As it stands, Barbara feels like a meticulously carved treasure box to which one has lost the key—magnificent to behold, impossible to unlock.

Tasteful, tentatively adventurous post-Britpop record that would’ve gotten sandwiched between Elbow and South on a “next Radiohead” listicle 20 years ago.

Like their namesake, Melted Toys’ willfully warped nature can get in the way of their utility.

Sadly, Roots & Echoes' air of studious refinement sullies even its more cerebral material with schmaltzy gestures.

Range Anxiety goes by in an instant, makes minimal demands, and is remarkably enjoyable for its simple pleasures. It may not have the heft to move you, but it’s gentle and never unwelcome.

At its best, One Nation sounds like a beat tape left to crackle for a decade in somebody's garage, a kind of post-Chronic spin on one of those far-out late 70s dub-inflected collaborative krautrock LPs. But other times it feels like a series of conceptual curios that seems to think holding the listener at arm's length might even be too close.

There's a lack of thought and care, a feeling that this band is still figuring out what it wants to be while not treading on too many toes in the process.

The exuberant overload of Blueberry Boat will thrill and transport you with the ineluctable force of a great children's story, one whose execution matches its imagination.

The Finns' latest is glossy, emotional, and sure to satisfy longtime listeners-- as well as any Stereophonics or Aqualung fans paying their respects.

There's room for Smoke to grow into this new guise, but Wraetlic is too satisfied with its own dissatisfaction to serve as anything more than comfort food for those predisposed to melancholia.

Move Way, dBridge's new EP and his first for the evergreen R&S label, puts a strong focus on his efforts to maintain the structural integrity and rhythmic impact of drum and bass while pushing its forms outward from the template-driven repetition he's spent his post-Bad Company career trying to counterbalance.

It’s a maximalist riot where he doesn’t just leech off musical trends but absorbs them into the kind of insecure, heartfelt, drained, and charmingly corny Drake party songs that are in short supply these days.

So although Labyrinthes further establishes Malajube as French Canadians worth following, this time you may not make it far enough to save your brother from the Goblin King.

If It Feels So Good When I Stop expands his abilities as a writer, it'd be at least interesting to hear a record of his that does the same for his skills as a musician.

Tiptoeing around already familiar ideas, the album’s first half never finds new footing.

At its best, Wolf manages to make the inroads toward accessibility that Goblin wouldn’t and pulls it off without sacrificing too much of Tyler’s refreshing capriciousness.

She has an urbane sophistication that sets her apart from the likes of Ashanti and Nivea.

Woon's managed one assured and beguiling hybrid of UK bass pressure and slick blue-eyed soul.

On Falling Off the Lavender Bridge, Hynes offers a comfortable (and more interesting) marriage of lush Brit-pop and Omaha-flavored country-rock.

It's a contemplative work setting the stage for Mould's upcoming memoir, whose hooks will for once have to connect without the almost comforting bark of his vocals or buzz of his guitar behind them.

Lantern’s risk-taking is daring and giddy, but its favored mode, and Hudson Mohawke’s best, is hooky, crowded, rap-conscious electropop.

While Acousmatic Sorcery is interesting and occasionally even great on its own, it ultimately it feels very much like a hyper-creative and gifted artist trying to figure out what he's doing.

Writing from the heart does not automatically imbue lyrics with depth. Never is it more apparent that the factory approach is not allowing Cara to fulfill her potential than on “Scars To Your Beautiful.”

Bainbridge’s production is always tasteful and seldom bad, but is only great when heightened by its guests. On Something like a War, those guests are generally pretty good; sometimes they are very good.

What the album actually does is present a calming looseness-- nothing shocking or obscure, and better for it.

The production is muted, minor-key, and consistently beautiful, conjuring the familiar Future Moods: rain-streaked neon signs, drug-induced stupors inside of clubs at 3 a.m. If you are content to live inside this lonely little world Future has made, he is still keeping it nice for you. What you won’t find on The WIZRD is the sound of Future stretching or surprising himself.