With these songs, you can hear the love letter to aughts rap-rock that Bear aimed for, not a misguided attempt at catering to Fortnite players. Unfortunately, most of Hole Erth comes across like the latter.

Too often, Lord's approach to her lyrics is overly reverent, to the detriment of the music itself.

A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. ... His political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance.

There's isn't much in the way of clues as to why they wrote and recorded in secret, but this, their debut, sounds like an album that wasn't yet ready to be heard. It is beautifully crafted and rich in demure detail, but Street of the Love of Days is largely bereft of energy or direction.

Although there will always be certain comfort in Margo Timmins' voice, her limitations are frustrating.

It starts strong (with the pensive 'Honor Wishes'), and ends on a high note (with the title track leading into 'To America,' Wasser's duet with Wainwright). Unfortunately, the middle of the album, burdened with turgid low points.

The progression from early singles to first album isn’t nearly the same arc as it was just 10 years ago, but it’s still weird that the first full-length showcase for Skrillex as self-contained album artist feels more like a transitional record than a debut that plays to his strengths.

Dreamland falls prey to the unfortunate mode of modern branding that conflates personal nostalgia with making a point. Glass Animals want to talk about The Way We Live, when it’s really just Let’s Remember Some Stuff.

It's a singular sound that's as trying as any of the year's scarier noise records, but it's also uncompromising: a pop-music dealbreaker, even for fiscally responsible, architecturally dashing electro-pop.

Outer, fittingly enough, projects its energies relentlessly outward, broadcasting its emotional content in a way that too often feels heavy-handed.

It is hard not to be a little dismayed to see that Efterklang have settled for what is likely the least daring--if perhaps not the least lucrative--path going forward.

It's the Brian Jonestown Massacre album that's the least informed by the usual parade of 1960s mod/psych influences, opting instead for flirtations with disco rhythms, drum loops, boom-box beats and house-diva wails. In a sense, Newcombe has simply replaced one form of repetition (droning/jangly guitar jams) for another (dance workouts).

Unfortunately, Inherit tries to give the listener both of these great tastes at once, resulting in a combination that's less like chocolate and peanut butter, and more like toothpaste and orange juice.

Even at its most outrageous, Princess of Power suffers less from silliness than from safeness.

They try to create atmosphere in an airlock, lumbering instead of fostering groove, failing to generate any heat or friction as nearly every interesting turn on these songs happens within the first minute.

It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about Cash in his final months, nor does it sound like an attempt to re-brand an icon or re-shape a legacy.

By the fourth or fifth trip through Gensho, the idea begins to slip into pure gimmickry, as though this were a notion that sounded fun for old friends to try but isn't so fun to hear.

Adiós doesn't add much to Campbell’s legacy--the comeback records of recent years formed a fitting final act--but it’s a pleasant postscript, a wistful reminder of the joys a great musician once gave.

This might be her least distinguished set of songs to date, relying too heavily on cliché (“I’m flying without even trying”) and vague, pat sentiment (“Sometimes it doesn’t come together ’til it breaks”).

Tyler Ballgame has a special voice; he just hasn’t yet made it distinct.

Most of LIVE LIFE FAST plays out with this kind of energy: forced, obvious, its best ideas obscured in a haze of self-satisfaction.

Gentlemen's about as interesting as middling Pollard records get, but it's middling all the same, a fittingly abnormal end to a most unusual year.

The problem is that while Hourglass has Gahan sounding a lot more assured and competent as a songwriter, it's also too much what you'd expect of him.

Ra Ra Riot sound overly self-conscious, the rural environs of their recording space failing to provide the warmth, empathy, or exuberance of The Rhumb Line.

The untangled pop of In and Out of Control has been reconfigured and dipped in black eyeliner as the Raveonettes veer toward 1980s goth.

The problem with Chapter II is that even the album’s high points are only just good, when the dubstep world has reasonably come to expect great things from Benga.

The music is big but gentle, offered without tension or anger. When it is not big-- see the leaden sentiment of "You Make Me Feel" and "Delicately"-- it is laughably composed and calculating.

Corgan settles for an album that’s tastefully cordial but about as suspenseful as a round of bumper bowling. There are a few moments when everything clicks, when the passive pleasantness gives way to active pleasure, most of them involving a smartly deployed string quartet.