It's good to hear him still recording, even if he's deeply entrenched himself in his own wheelhouse and barely has a single surprising moment in the album's whole hour. But if the album never existed, nobody's life would be much poorer for it-- possibly even Devin's.

Dapperton’s potential shines when he pushes himself, when it sounds like he’s making music for self-expression and fun, expanding his vocal range and messing around with reverb. He loses it inside of self-imposed pop formulas and strained symbolism.

If Wale, Meek, and Pill could find a way to focus on their own strengths, maybe they'd sound more comfortable alongside their new boss. Instead, they all sound like they're trying to become mini-Rosses, and it doesn't work for them.

In its drive for conceptual rigor, the album neglects to engage the listener musically. That puts a lot of weight on the story, which tends toward the abstract.

Anyone who buys this without owning Ironman, Supreme Clientele or Fishscale is going to miss the bigger picture, and anyone who buys it while already owning those albums isn't gaining much at all.

Hot Hot Heat sound like they're playing scared and playing it safe, and in doing so fall through the cracks between their established fans and their imagined ones.

On Diamond in the Ruff, he sounds more than ever like he's the ultimate good soldier, one desperately in need of a general.

Until they can really stand out from the crowd, Seapony just come across as garden-variety twee.

Riceboy Sleeps can keep you company in your cubicle or gridlock traffic.

Swoon ultimately delivers the exact same results as its predecessor mostly because it's written in nearly the exact same way. The problem all along for the Silversun Pickups isn't that they sound too much like the Smashing Pumpkins. They just sound way too much like themselves.

While Theater isn't quite as dire as the above may indicate, like every other Ludacris record, it doesn't grow on you--in fact, it actually contracts.

Thrills are few and far between amid this hour-long morass. Bloodmoon suffers from two problems that seem as though they should preclude one another: It is thin on fresh ideas and unexpected twists. Its hard rock-meets-hardcore permutations are familiar to anyone who has ever heard, say, Evanescence and Breaking Benjamin.

Townes, though well intended, shows neither of these formidable artists in his best light.

While BTS’s rapping usually incorporates a dated style of aggression and braggadocio, the fire in the delivery was often enough. Songs like “2.0” and “they don’t know ’bout us” instead sound sleepy, as if the members are just clocking in at the Biggest Band in the World factory. What remains in a lot of these tracks, then, are dazzling little ornaments.

Their experiments don't always yield useful results-- the downcast, acoustic-guitar-powered "Partners in Crime" comes awkwardly decorated with free-form piano rolls that trip up rather than propel the song's momentum. But there are moments when CSS find a way to successfully evolve without alienating their base.

Besides a handful of catchy verses, though, there aren’t enough standout moments on B.I.B.L.E.

If only the rest of the record caught on to that out-front force--the words on Love Letters might scan as more than lonely fridge-magnet poetry, the beats might feel like more than just placeholders, and the music could be something to dance to instead of just drift off to.

Time of the Assassins could have used a few more trips to the Rolodex to bring in a ringer of a singer or two, since Fraiture doesn't seem up to the task, or necessarily even into it.

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.

The paradox about them is this: With two people, Om sounded expansive; with more, they sound comparatively weak. The music is unmistakably theirs, but the intensity of it feels lost in the arrangements.

Overall, it's this sense of forced importance that makes the album no fun: You feel like it's meant to do something to you, not for you.

This album can't be written off purely as a repetitive mess--this is the sound they were going for, after all, and when they rely less heavily on repetition, drones, and electronics, they find some decent material.

As a lyricist, Fink's too reliant on indistinct yearn, and while you might relate to some of Spring's bummed-out bromide, Fink's moping seems too scopic to hit anyone very deep for very long. Sometimes you just put it in a letter.

That mischief is largely missing from Origin: Orphan, and the lack of lyrical cleverness seems to have infected the music as well, making for a mostly cloudy listen from a formerly sunny-day band.

An album of tepid and stylistically muddled techno.

After spending 15 minutes sounding like preordained headliners, Tribes trudge through half an hour of perfunctorily composed and performed verses and choruses that are all too deniable.

So among Forfeit/Fortune's many misses, Bachmann can't help but hit a few.

It’s surprising how well the new sound works, though the voice of Skiba doesn’t always mesh comfortably with the production. As always, angst and unrequited affections are aplenty, but it all feels far too tame.