It's a shame the Rakes stopped just as they were starting to sound fun again, but if they had to end it while they still had that last spark of fun left, it's a better decision than most successful bands can bring themselves to make.

For all the racket, there simply isn’t enough focus, enough control, or enough music. Improvisations hints at the duo’s potential but is a fundamentally insubstantial listen.

In Ciara's effort to prove herself a diva, her second album flails, bloated with spoken-word interludes and boilerplate pop & b that obscures some truly good songs.

This Is Gap Dream ends up being too truthful, as there’s rarely any indication Fulvimar intended for this to reach an audience far beyond himself.

[Buyers oif the CD will] hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

He set out to make a mediocre album, and succeeded admirably.

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

The real problem with Volcano, though, is not only the fact that they aren't really doing anything inventive with their music, but that the music itself is utterly forgettable.

Not really a must-have collection for anyone that doesn't have a Ben Gibbard shrine in the corner of their dorm room.

Replaces the cheap sounds of their earlier records with more traditional sonics, which leave the often-clever lyrics feeling like an afterthought.

Unlike Dedication 2 or Da Drought 3, Sorry 4 the Wait sounds like the work of a mortal human being. Happily, that mortal human being still happens to be very good at rapping.

With Outrage! Is Now, Death From Above join the rare breed of artists who are able to capitalize on their maturity without betraying the spirit of their youth.

If Holy Motors are limited in range, they show genuine skill at bringing their one mood to vivid life.

In short: We all really wish this was better-- less tiring, less dour, less sluggish-- than it actually is.

Whether she's giving the rhythm section a cigarette break, trying to approximate the sound of an anesthetized New Pornographers, or adding the same sort of pseudo-dancey Casio flourishes that have colored her work since the first Azure Ray album, Taylor never fails to instill the same sense of inescapable inertia throughout.

While Cave represents a return to form, the band hasn't recaptured the beauty of early highlights like 'When the Red King Comes' or 'A Dream in Sound.'

This year, we've seen Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, and the Get Up Kids attempting to play catch up with themselves, but here Braid bafflingly jettison the goodwill of their past: the palm-muted verses and squeaky choruses, the one-sided conversations of the lyrics, the antiseptic production -- I'll say it could come from anyone because you probably don't remember who the Pinehurst Kids are.

Too often, he strays from the hushed mode he's mastered and ends up supplanting the band’s strengths with its weaknesses.

Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city.

Prisoner is marred by weak analogies (“colder than Minnesota,” “buzz like Georgia Tech) and Kweli’s bumpy writerliness (“ornithology” and “onomatopoeia” are just two less-than-melodious words used here), leading this to be his most underwhelming record yet word-for-word.

It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s easy to understand the need to release it. At best, Losst and Founnd is a way to feel closer to Nilsson, no matter how long it’s been since he left us.

-, pronounced “subtract,” which responds to them much like its predecessor, 2021’s =, did to its themes of turning 30 and becoming a parent: with the usual beige palette, generic hooks, and vapid lyrics. The songs on - are almost uniformly dour, often slow, occasionally drumless.

A lot of Make Another World doesn't stick the way good guitar pop should.

Virtually every track on You Are the One I Pick showcases Felix's remarkable instinct for knowing when to ramp up their instrumentation and when to hold back. Yet when an album is this carefully arranged, there are also moments when all the fingerprints on a given track become distracting.

The best parts of Banks are the ones that most resemble Interpol, rather than the stabs at spooky, old-guy mope-pop that comprise most of the record. In that respect, this album fails as a valid statement outside of the confines of Banks' band.

MellowHigh is not disorienting but rather frighteningly familiar.

Methyl Ethel’s debut full-length, Oh Inhuman Spectacle, is reflective of the project’s humble, hermetic beginnings, with Webb handling all the production and instrumentation.

That the songs are essentially interchangeable 8-cylinder rawk is one thing; that they begin to clearly resemble the long-forgotten, acid-coated Eastern-revivalists Kula Shaker is something more distressing altogether.