Every song on the album is crafted with clinical meticulousness, its production clean as a whistle, but like a flawlessly constructed garment lacking in inventive design it ultimately falls short.

There are enough instrumental interludes and understated melodies here to make the record a grower, and it eases into the sunset for much of its back half.

While Manuva's unorthodox style is a unique pleasure, too often his flow can be laconic to the point of being subliminal--a good portion of Slime & Reason's midsection demands attention, but doesn't necessarily deserve it, not when the beats that support his rhymes are just-below-scale like the budget g-funk of "Kick Up Ya Foot".

In 1997, this kind of thing--crisp, echoing guitars, provincial strings, existential moodiness--actually sounded kind of exciting. Just over a decade later, though, the exact same recipe, prepared exactly the same way, conjures up new dominant aftertastes: false profundity, compositional laziness, and outsized egos.

The Golden State band Golden Animals mine that particular epoch of mild psych and blues rock--especially the middle part, when 60s idealism gave way to the dope-daze haze of the 70s--for all it's worth on Free Your Mind and Win a Pony, the duo's solid enough debut.

Never mind the retro-gazing moniker-- The Week That Was is a band you need to hear now.

That inferiority complex and desperate need for approval keeps L.A.X. surprisingly entertaining even though there are far more weak tracks on it than good ones.

It's not a case of Solange performing best when she jettisons her ambition, but rather her need to find a way to let her avant inclinations work with rather than against her pop instincts, and maybe the best way for that to happen is to let the former emerge organically through the latter.

As much work as Sweet clearly put into this disc, hearing him glide instead of soar makes it all sound too easy, which sadly makes it that much easier to forget.

Motorhead do what they do best: be Motorhead.

The band's superhuman patience and dirty minimalism seem fit for longer, more sprawling works. Instead, they're stuck in limbo between catchiness and craftsmanship.

Listeners are left wondering if they’ve just gorged on an Anglo response to J-pop, a post (white-)boy-band attempt to alley-oop new jack swing, or the work of a Scissor Sister gone solo.

Plush's vision was obviously reaching beyond his abilities when making this album, and though that's commendable--better to try and fail than not try at all--sometimes you acheive less on the road to greatness.

There's something to be said for a debut album that so vehemently defies conformity, even if it kinda cuts off its nose to spite its face in the process.

By paying attention to detail, Yttling and Li's prove that doesn't have to be [an impossible task]. But even more impressive is the way their intimate, playful miniatures capture the daring and novelty of modern pop, as well as its hooks.

It's rare for a band to survive the death of a key member, but Ra Ra Riot are actually thriving, turning The Rhumb Line from a potential "what could've been" record into a rousing, poignant testament to Pike's life and his former bandmates' resilience.

To that end, the whole album has a lightness of touch that makes it sound warm and comfortable, especially after the sad weight evident on the also-excellent "Margerine Eclipse."

Like the Blood Brothers, Take Me to the Sea is united by Whitney's voice, impossible to ignore as it slides between seemingly any style that could be described using the verb "wail."

You & Me isn't as hard or immediate as the band's earlier records, but that's not a complaint; Its sound is coy, and invites you to spend time with it.

Earth is a whopping 70 minutes long, and at no point in it do we get an idea of what exactly the fuck the Dandy Warhols are trying to tell us.

Oceans Will Rise is not a bad album, but it is very much the sound of a band still trying to figure out who they are--and in fairness, they have lost and gained a member since their first record. But three albums into a career, they should have a better idea than this.

The joy of watching them not fly off the rails made even the weaker shows worth hearing. But in turning that experience into a scrapbook, Remember kills the magic.

Lindstrom knows all the right moves to give his own brand of spacey disco an air of transcendence, but the result feels so effortless that his facsimile and the "real thing" become indistinguishable--a fake so real it's beyond fake.

Songs this bitter demand catharsis, but nestled in its pop cocoon, that side of Hatfield's story instead gets stifled by the soft bomb approach when what you really want is for the singer, once and for all, to explode in rage and break something.

On first listen, his second album as Death Vessel may seem passive, even flat-- just competent, non-descript folk-rock. Give it time, though, and Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us proves more intriguing.

These 15 tracks were certainly worth the almost-decade-long wait.

Human Highway work best in this inviting, flickering-campfire headspace, and for an amiable if ephemeral 40 minutes, Moody Motorcycle offers a pleasant soundtrack to the dwindling days of the summer.

This is clearly a band with some musicology under its collective belt, and its members have the technical skill to fold their diverse interests into guitar rock without forcing anything; the surprises come fast and, often, satisfyingly. But Haege's big voice puts a lot of emphasis on the prolix lyrics, which remain dismal.