Despite its reduced scope, Life Sux is actually pretty versatile depending on where you stand with Wavves--take it as further confirmation of his permanent immaturity, or a sign that rattling off rudimentary but undeniably hooky punk-pop comes fairly easy to him.

Despite the emphasis on atmosphere that pervades the album and that seems like a necessary byproduct of its creative technology, The Fall may be the most earthbound Gorillaz album yet--and at times, therefore, the most banal.

Bint's mostly relaxed and easy approach teases out enough pleasant moments on Into the Trees but rarely offers a resolution.

McLamb seems to be relishing the chance to get outside of his head, making music that is gorgeous and unashamedly fun.

The Divine Comedy's constants are a Wildean wit with an apposite sense of style, and they persist on extravagant ninth album Victory for the Comic Muse.

Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers.

FUTURE is a fine mix of the stylings of past Futures layered in a rich blend of sounds from a now refined sonic palette. It doesn’t communicate the same intense and complicated emotional concoction that fills his songs when he’s at his most vulnerable and compelling. But it doesn’t have to.

On We Are the Night, the Chemical Brothers have switched from integrators to imitators.

Lil Baby and Durk’s new joint album, The Voice of the Heroes, is not quite a marquee work for either artist, though it is reliably consistent and casts them as a natural pair—near-ideal complements to one another in writing and execution.

The immaculate emptiness is, in a sense, Asiatisch’s masterstroke, helping bolster the pervading sense of dislocation of being exposed to a society that’s been fed through the photocopier one too many times.

If their debut explored the space within, the Earlies' latest, The Enemy Chorus, peers into the void of the final frontier, with a similar kitchen-sink approach and more of the krautrock sprawl that characterized early singles like "Morning Wonder".

The Singles' six originals would make for a disconnected night out, and no doubt an energetic live show, but they're a wild ride in headphones.

It's a huge headfirst leap into the unknown for Kidwell, and more often than not, he sounds pretty lost. But it's an encouraging kind of lost, and the scenery is often breathtaking when it's not so jarring.

Unfortunately, this humanity doesn't translate to the music. The performances are flawless, but overly so.

Most tracks here make no bones about aiming straight for the radio. Choruses are airy and open, melodies are sticky and straightforward and tend to lodge in your head with or without your approval.

Blouse found a balance between texture and melody: here was a band that clearly cared about atmosphere, but never at the expense of a solid, Top Gun soundtrack-worthy hook.

It would do well as an introduction to the group for an unfamiliar listener, but doesn’t feel necessary by any means. If anything, Spirit comes across as more mood music by design, bespoke and undemanding, and it probably already has real estate on every bedroom-themed playlist on Spotify.

Five albums in, Cults sound just as eerie and cheery as ever but struggle to transcend the fleeting pleasantries of paint-by-numbers pop.

This is deeply un-portable music: It either demands your complete attention or invites you to shut it off. Once through that opening stretch, your attention will frequently be rewarded. There is powerfully evocative, richly imagined music to be found here.

Joanne never reveals much of a narrative or stylistic through-line, and even her brief dips into indie-rock--her collaborations with Father John Misty on “Sinner’s Prayer” and “Come to Mama” (Misty is also credited as a writer on Beyonce’s Lemonade), and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on “Perfect Illusion” (Rihanna covered Parker’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” on Anti)--feel familiar.

Just as "Viva" did an admirable job of troubleshooting the band's lazy weaknesses while expanding their sound, Prospekt's March offers a truncated version of their svelte and marginally progressive new formula.

The rhyme skills and lurid way with imagery that first brought the group to national attention remain on display throughout the album, but YRN's warring agendas suggest a few more tries are in order for the Migos to get their formula sorted.

Despite its overall hazy, sun-lit-kaleidoscope feel, it's just too sonically scattershot to truly take in and enjoy as a body of work.

The hard-driving Blame Confusion, in too big a hurry to stop and take in the scenery, simply lets too much whoosh by in the periphery.

There are a handful of moments here when he turns himself inside-out over the course of a song, bringing him into the orbit of those artists he so obviously idolizes. Now he just needs to figure out how to emulate his starting position.

Rather than feel tacked-on incongruities, the three Rave Tapes remixes found on the EP’s second half provide a welcome, unpredictably outré counterpoint to the linear songs heard on the first.

Though it clocks in at just 28 minutes, This Is Steve is generously overstuffed--with gorgeous melodies, compositional quirks, sonic details, goofy ideas, and messy feelings.