It's billed as something of a minor release (in the same way What a Time to Be Alive was minor but they still wanted your money for it), but it's still an "official" one, meaning Future swings for a few radio hits here. They feel more obligatory than outright bad.

For all its surface simplicity, Cotillions is saddled with its own peculiar Corganian paradox: the lightest, breeziest songs of his career add up to a demanding slog of a record.

The low ebbs detract from an album that’s otherwise difficult to resist bouncing to.

Rebel Heart grows confusing and irreconcilably uneven as it progresses.

Theirs is the rare lead vocalist/backing vocalist dynamic that feels like an equal partnership, with Violet’s injections propelling these songs nearly as much as their rubbery bass lines or pogoing guitars.

Another goddamn home run.

While the songwriting may be on autopilot, Gallagher’s decision to self-produce Chasing Yesterday was a smart one, resulting in an album that feels both intimate and expansive.

With its variations in mood, tone, and personnel, Basses Loaded plays more like compilation of B-sides culled from multiple recording sessions spanning several years.

What is unexpected is how Wilson sounds almost anonymous here. As he drifts through his greatest hits and personal favorites, he doesn’t invest his playing with much personality, so these smooth sounds are about as memorable as a piano twinkling away in the background of a department store.

The moments where Mastermind gives us William Roberts the man instead of Rick Ross the gangster flick composite character with the borrowed name are scarce, and he remains committed to dialing in good life platitudes that increasingly ring hollow.

To the familiar, Robin Guthrie has already proven he's better than this; to the uninitiated, Imperial offers a muted exposition of his talents.

Forget Yourself is no small resurrection, and though it owes a great deal to The Church's traditionalism, that's nothing to apologize for.

For better or worse, this is not Moon Safari Redux.

Unfortunately, Fire in the Hole fails to invoke any effective nostalgia as it phlegmatically wanders through 12 solid but unexciting tracks.

Young, earnest, eerie, and overzealous, Von is a unique, almost belligerently unaffiliated piece of music that unsubtly blazons its idiosyncrasies.

Hello Happiness is a messy, overproduced, anonymous set of hotel-lobby beats that makes woeful use of one of the greatest voices of all time. ... There’s a moment when Hello Happiness works. On the sensual and affirming closing track, “Ladylike,” Chaka Khan finally breaks free of vocal effects.

At only 33 minutes, Subtítulo doesn't leave Rouse, longtime producer Brad Jones, and their small band much time to recover from such miscues.

Even more denatured and opaque than the soupy Melbourne, Sunshine Redux is self-produced to a gooey, garish, gritty and barely mobile gel.

Terrible Human Beings can still be cherry-picked for catchy singles bound for algorithmic playlists, but it’s impossible to overlook how much of the Orwells’ appeal is bundled into their persona as enfants terribles.

The Magician's Private Library isn't an attention-grabbing debut in the plain sense. The best moments drift along naturally and without hassle.

A broader palate is still under development, but Apar provides a path forward without forfeiting Delorean's effortless energy.

Where Folkloric Feel opted for cobwebby murk, National Anthem of Nowhere dovetails in bright, tidy corners. It's at once straight-laced and funky in the way that only indie rock can be.

True Sadness is a record that can’t seem to get out of its own way. Almost every track is bloated with instrumentation.

The aggressively banal orchestral arrangements and cornball baritone make Jacket Full of Danger something like a rakish Scott Walker for the post-Beck era.

More energy and less uniformly drab scenery might have kept these well-intentioned stories from blurring into each other.

What was once alienating and difficult in Eat Skull’s music now reads as interesting quirks attached to pleasing packages. With III, Eat Skull is willing to be loved--and be loveable, too.

Given its relatively seamless mesh of spiky, aggro party music and the more contemplative electronic moments created by Martinez and Moore, Spring Breakers is the rare soundtrack that covers both extremes and makes it work as a whole.

E S T A R A is almost hypnotic in its tendency to make each individual track blur itself into an indistinct piece of a loosely memorable whole, one with little impression actually retained even if it jumps from mood to mood.