Much of Goldblum’s banter has a you-had-to-be-there quality, like squinting at a friend’s blurry photos from a party you weren’t invited to. That makes The Capitol Studios Sessions feel more like a document of an experience than the main attraction. Goldblum's most devoted obsessives won't need much persuading to visit his club.

Much of the material sounds rushed and half-finished, like a high schooler trying to write a research page paper during his lunch period.

Overall, South are in roughly the same place they've always been, making good post-Britpop music that sounds fantastic and sometimes erupts in a moment of unadulterated brilliance.

Street produces again, and Robyn Hitchcock is among the guests, but even they can't make up for repetitive, one-dimensional songs--mostly sleepy folk, occasionally fuzzy psych.

The wearying volume of Jackrabbit is the most taxing aspect of a record that already arrives intentionally overstuffed.

More often than not, ColleGrove plays out like 2 Chainz pulling his friend and mentor up by his bootstraps while ceding a bit of the spotlight in the process. It’s a generous gesture, but a costly one.

The Charm... is surprisingly great as conciliatory moves go.

Under the cloak of Triple F's blatant crossover appeals, he slyly exceeds expectations by making a record better than it really needs to be.

Collaborations like this work best when there’s some meaningful contrast between the performers, though, and Joe and Remy Ma are too similar to establish any kind of yin/yang dynamic.

Their reedy, one-note falsettos barely have the range for dance tracks that ask almost nothing of them, and For Ever’s mopier material is at odds with the very specific, frivolous itch that listeners come to this band to scratch. Jungle fare best when they stick to the grooves.

The original is a seduction; this [album] is food-court flirtation.

The misstep here is the addition of something altogether basic: Vocals.

The band's third LP, Gramahawk, is pretty much a do-over in every conceivable way.

While there are flashes of wisdom on Case Study 01, there are also a handful of clunky moments when Caesar’s out of his depth. ... Like his contemporaries 6LACK and Brent Faiyaz, Caesar is clearly talented, but he’s got a lot of learning to do.

Dancehall is a singles-driven genre, but Popcaan often shines in the album format, so it’s regrettable that many of these 17 songs feel so lackluster. For a genre rooted in joy and conviviality, the letdown is hard to ignore.

It's plenty catchy and big, but it's also wildly uncreative and predictable.

Look at the Powerful People begins with 54 of the most exciting seconds of music I’ve heard in 2017. And then they start talking.

In the end, though, it’s that feeling of disposability that makes the album’s title resonate more pointedly in the wrong way.

The separation anxiety that Freaky induces is its unfortunate undoing, though we can least be glad that someone had the good sense not to include dialogue interludes for context's sake.

Jeezy is mostly comfortable doing the same things he’s always done and letting others take the leaps. But times are changing and Jeezy is still clearly struggling to adapt to them.

We get truckloads of overzealous horns that sound ripped off from his buddy Conan's late-night band, White's own fuzzed-out guitar, bustling drums, and cartoon-y slide work. The wild excess often ends up shoving Jackson to the sidelines on her own album.

I'm sure defenders of the band will champion Mars Volta as a keeper of the prog-rock flame, but The Bedlam in Goliath renders the term meaningless--the result couldn't be more averse to actual progress in rock music.

The good news is that they're too skilled, experienced, and important to make a record that's just a mess, and for a while there's nothing so terrible about this one.

Zig Zaj feels like he's straining a little too hard to make every song different from the last, where he's actually become pinned down by the "eclectic" reputation he's accrued, forcing him to make unwise decisions just to keep a certain degree of diversity afloat in his work.

Drown Out has plenty of sublime moments, but as each of them has little do with any other it ends up sounding less like an album and more like a grab bag of hurried ideas, the best of which will eventually be experienced somewhere far more immediate.

Ultimately, No Tourists is the sound of a once-inflammatory band happily lodged in its comfort zone, where virtuoso water treading meets industrial-strength customer satisfaction.

As the languid classical guitar that dots the album brings it to a close, it hits that this 44-minute opus is perhaps more inviting, and more melodic, than anything Jenkinson has done in a long time.

Cokefloat! is not always admirable but it's emotionally open.