Black Mountain are about as referential as they come. But despite the obvious touchstones-- which, incidentally, fucking rule-- the band are affable and idiosyncratic enough to win over those who passed on recent retrofits like Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral or My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves, and make those records' admirers practically cream themselves.

Guests reinforces its inessential nature by presenting, for the most part, a one-dimensional rendering of DOOM as a lyricist.

The drastic acoustic reinterpretation on this album feels like the song’s natural state, the long-building crescendo threatens to swallow the singer before he has finished saying his piece.

Aside from its more sociopolitical shortcomings, Everybody refuses to stop and evaluate why it exists in the first place. A lot has been made of Logic’s technical skill, but it can’t really be considered proficiency if it isn’t efficient.

Secret Machines remain the same band responsible for 'Now Here Is Nowhere' and 'Ten Silver Drops,' which means the toughest tracks often still devolve into hypnotic grooves and motorik mutations, and the gentlest starts often lead to the most bombastic conclusions.

Gucci, who was rap's most exciting figure a year and a half ago, is on a profound losing streak, and it's easy to hear The Return of Mr. Zone 6, his new street album, as an attempt to reverse that slide.

The resulting project is dimmed down and diluted.

There's an interesting sound here, a shell of an idea. But there is ultimately very little melody or personality for the arrangements to support and the record winds up sounding weirdly conservative.

The problem with Twelve isn't the staid song selection so much as this dogged insistence on staying faithful to the originals.

A little more stylistic and structural variety could lead to something special.

Though it boasts a couple of heaters, A Thousand Heys butts up against the same problem faced by so many others working in this timeless but relatively basic template -- there are undoubtedly listeners who won't ever get enough of this stuff, but how can you distinguish yourself while still maintaining the spirit of your predecessors?

Where the record falters is on the rockers, which are composed of clichés and exhausted riffs only.

It’s almost as if the first half of the album is comprised of songs that Crocodiles had finished writing by the time they got to the studio, and the second half is all of the stuff that they came up with while they were there. And this exploratory spirit is where Boys finds its strength.

Jamison's most captivating and personal album yet.

Whether inspired by lovers, each other, or the warmongers of the world, Kings of Convenience's latest is ultimately just what its title says: a bold and beautiful assertion that we are better off together than apart.

Treble and Tremble showcases a full array of old-school remedies, from inventive mic'ing and overdubbing to brutal filters and bullhorn distortion a la Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse. If Espinoza sang any better than he does, he'd probably be bored in the studio.

O'Connor sounds very relaxed, and ultimately humbled by the ancient material. She resists the temptation to use her vocal tics and affectations; for the most part, she sings the words with a straightforward clarity and reverence.

So while Delìrivm Cordìa is filled with great blocks of sound, it too often loses sight of direction.

It feels like exactly what it is: a slipshod collection of songs constructed intermittently, in broad strokes, over a period of years.

It's too listenable overall to be outright dismissed as some sort of flop. But it's too willfully unobtrusive and happy with its lack of ambition to try and sell as good pop, even in a year thin on the mediocre kind.

It's accomplished and impressive always, but sometimes to the point of verging on an overstuffed din.

The problem is that Melidis’ ear for busy atmospherics and his desire to say something deep don’t quite mesh; this music is like that huge spinning wheel on "The Price Is Right"--efficient, colorful, deadening.

With an album replete with Spanish guitar jams, wide-eyed hip-hop, and psychedelic rock k-holes, there isn't much ground left for Raury to cover. Now, he must figure out how to do it all just a little bit better.

Oh Wonder’s musical project works when the simplicity of the writing matches the simplicity of the sound. When the former element tilts out of sync—gaudy, cliché lyrics about holding cards to chests and feeling “blindsided by love”—the record caves in on itself.

What Abstract does bring to the table, though, is an ear for sticky, misshapen melodies and a rap producer’s sense of pacing, which keeps Blanket moving so briskly that its periodic clumsiness doesn’t bog it down much.

Some songs maintain the attraction of anticipation, hinting at where they might go without ever fully abandoning other options. But others feel more flat than ripe, not so much flirting with tense silence as drifting into empty inertia.

Here, it feels like a glimpse of foregone possibility on a lower-stakes project, the sound of two pros blowing off steam by proving they can recreate Top 40 spectacle.

As on that album ["Loveless"], the songs feel like they're whirling so far into the stratosphere that they might fly apart any second.