The album’s relaxed charm makes it an easy, endearing listen, but some of its collaborations don’t transcend their novelty.

Neither Future nor Thug is at the peak of his powers on Super Slimey, which forgoes explosiveness and poignancy for streamlined action, and many of the solo cuts shine brighter than the team-ups.

Although a talented songwriter, Legend is not a memorable lyricist, and he can falter when attempting to write a catchy pop hook.

He seems perfectly content to let these small-wonder songs shuffle out unobtrusively into the world, and it's come to feel like a comforting spot to return to every couple of years or so.

Otero War is a centrist indie rock record at a time when a center doesn’t really exist and there are vastly more interesting and inclusive things going on just outside the frame.

While not necessarily essential to the UMO catalog, Hanoi finds the band reveling in its psychedelic roots and exploring a primeval darkness that their songs often only hint at.

The nuts and bolts of the singsongy rhythms matter. Lil Baby is at his best when he’s using those tricks to switch between moods, but there’s just one on It’s Only Me, and it’s indifference: not in the too-cool-to-care kind of way, but in the way when words have no weight behind them.

A modest record of modest aims from a songwriter coming to terms with his current station.

Unfortunately, Vek's voice outstays its welcome by the middle of the album. Leisure Seizure is front-loaded with its best material, such that the second half of the record becomes rather tedious.

Speck Mountain still have some distance to travel before they fill an album with such moments, so that whenever you hear their music, you think of them first rather than their influences. But this is only their second full-length, and it's a solid step in that direction.

Even at its best, though, In My World resembles a less-engaging version of someone else, the sound of an artist regressing instead of stepping forward into new territory.

Were it not for these issues [the album’s lyrical stasis scans as disappointing] and the B-Side's proliferation of yawn-inducing, stoned slow jams, The Getaway could have potentially bested By The Way as the Peppers’ best work post-Californication.

This sort of brevity and emptiness makes the tail end of the album, already short at 26 minutes, feel throwaway and hasty. It's hard not to feel, therefore, that this would have made a much better EP, losing some of the shapeless songs that drag down the momentum and charm of the record.

So though it does often feel like JJ have hit a wall on V, when they're able to scale that wall and dance with the stars, the album's a treat.

Endless Flowers is Crocodiles' best album and also their most frustrating. They're simply trying to do good enough and no more.

Even tracks that circle around a hazily imagined apocalypse—“This summer might be your last!”—can’t summon more than half a head bob. There’s enough energy pumping through these songs to move the 32-minute album along, but it feels like you’re slouching through the moving walkway at an airport. “Hi Someday” is an exception.

If nothing else, Alone reminds us that a lot of those over-ambitious, silly-on-paper ideas often blossomed in Cuomo's hands, and there was more to Weezer in their early days than just crisp power-pop and cute videos.

White People, for all its ambitions, fails to coalesce.

While the band has certainly grown musically, it also seems less patient and focused; much of the record feels like a hastily recorded jam session with a few superfluous electro-bobbles floating above the fray.

Over the course of 13 songs, though, Dude York wind up mimicking their idols as opposed to referencing them.

Nothing here is unforgettable or in danger of replacing its original. The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV’s Unplugged. At worst, Songs of Surrender is an overindulgence. At best, it’s a pleasant interlude.

Fans of shivery folk music with subtle plateaus will surely find things to like, but the rest of you might find yourselves wishing the "black dog" in Selway's basement had a bit more bite. At least he let it outside.

It’s Cosentino’s musicianship and knack for melody that prevents these songs from turning to fluff.

Nothing on Outbursts turns out to overblown sonically, but "Sea Change" does signal a straining quality that runs throughout the album.

For enthusiasts of the goth/post-punk nexus, it absolutely has its moments.

While there's nothing wrong with a predictable approach when deployed with expertise, it's disappointing from a band like the Frames.

Digital Ash has the claustrophobic feel of a singer locked up with a computer, and it's distractingly chipper, like Rilo Kiley in their own Dntel homages; not every Bright Eyes record has to be an emotional epic, but Digital Ash feels like a practice run.

While it is by no means a good album, The Sleepy Strange is a small step up from its brain atrophy-inducing predecessor. On the album's closer, "Vinyl Fever," the band almost attains a tight, Tortoise-esque instrumental groove. But after over 40 minutes of boredom and frustration, odds are the album will most likely be occupying a precious spot in your septic tank before you get there.