For those who missed Frightened Rabbit's last record, those who weren't already enthralled by these tuneful Scots, this album will really come alive.

In the end then, for all of Diplo's good intentions and curatorial muscle, the first volume of Blow Your Head struggles not just as a lesson, or a sampler, but also simply as a collection of songs you want to listen to.

While it sounds like it was taken from the same creative burst that birthed London producer Zomby's recent LP Dedication, here that album's glum funereality gets an almost dance-friendly makeover.

Everybody's Got It Easy But Me answers Finberg's ever-withering worldview with playful, rambunctious performances, enhancing the I-just-wasn't-made-for-these-times pathos of his lyrics by essentially making him sound like an outcast within his own songs.

The bursts of bright energy and amateurish enthusiasm on Golden Grrrls shine on wondrously for several minutes, but after a while the limitations of stunted musicianship and repetitive songwriting take over.

His greatest strength has always been world-building, using a synth-heavy blitz of candy-colored jazz chords taken straight (sometimes blatantly so) from the Pharrell handbook. Cherry Bomb isn’t exactly a hard left turn from this lane, but it is a quick swerve.

The songs are fine but largely feckless, and what could be an animating contrast between glum lyrics and upbeat music is too often hobbled by clunkers both generic ("I am lost in my mind when you go to sleep") and specific (something about tarot cards).

It's still questionable how this pretty, solemn music will work in the quirky context of Green's film, but it makes for a nice little album on its own.

Going Way Out With Heavy Trash is a lot of things-- wild, aged, loose, dangerous, ridiculous, respectful-- but it's not a joke. Even if it is kinda funny.

There's nothing wrong with tempering one's stance or mellowing out--and to We Are Wolves' credit, the slowest, spaciest numbers here are the most unexpected and most satisfying--but the driving momentum and risky harshness of past efforts are missed.

Our Pathetic Age reflects the way much of Shadow’s post-Endtroducing material has lacked structure, with the producer happy to throw ideas at the page, even if many of them don’t stick.

Raw Solutions is more ambitious than the average dance album, both in terms of the span of sonic territory that it covers and its attempts to synthesize all of it into one cohesive work.

In truth, they display a confidence in declining to chase or win over new fans that is exceedingly rare in legacy acts.

When Kele’s familiar voice leaps all over the limits of its range, songs like “The One Who Held You Up” take on a stagey quality. But overall, The Waves, Pt. 1 is a mid-career detour worth indulging. The left-of-center UK rock veteran sounds better here than he has at least since the best songs on 2017’s folksy Fatherland, his previous no-frills record. But this time Kele also sounds free.

Infinite Arms just feels less tender, less personal, more twang-by-numbers than the last couple, despite its familiar sound and many of the same principals.

The farther they wander, the more magnetic they become.

It's boldly rendered, and somehow crafts a very human world from cartoon sonics.

The Diet would benefit from more breezily subversive sing-alongs like that—as the album rolls on, Omori’s predilection for mid-tempo, mid-period Oasis starts to take over, and a certain uniformity of style, scale, and seriousness sets in.

Flat, rather forced attempts at oddballery give Mouseman a scattered, self-conscious feel it never quite shakes for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Lissie's voice is haunting as always, but the band doesn't match this tone, and as a result it no longer sounds like Lissie's song. Hopefully these missteps aren't enough to put people off, because Lissie is still a significant new voice.

Despite the stumbles, Nights includes some of California X's best work, and these moments are so strong, it's impossible to write the band off.

Spanning an obnoxious 82 minutes, the record goes through several musical and thematic phases, but the overall atmosphere is bitter, petty, worn-down. It confuses loyalty and stagnation, wallowing in a sound that is starting to show its limits.

All eleven tracks on Bad Timing are gems that balance a knack for brain-lodging choruses with the grime and stylistic drift of Exile on Main Street, begging a record collection's worth of comparisons with nary an instance of outright thievery.

On a Wire has that glossy veneer that only happens with the help of a good decisive manager, a fast-talking label guy with All The Answers, and that bloodthirsty, all-encompassing desire for yet another Big Tour.

Walking with the Beggar Boys sounds askew, a puzzle whose pieces don't fit properly. This sort of disjointedness can sometimes make for intriguing work, but here it just feels obligatory and slightly stunted.

They've managed to broaden the nervous-tic angst-rock of their previous band into something more readily adaptable without reducing it to mealy-mouthed pop regurge.

There's something uncomfortably sterile about The Sea and Cake's new, seven-song Glass EP that precludes it from functioning emotionally.

Taken as a whole, it’s a pretty, enveloping record that executes its modern influences with panache, though the intangible, purely aesthetic nature of Woolhouse’s vaguely downhearted emotional state makes it hard to appreciate Defo as anything other than luxurious ambient icing.