Cale squanders whatever momentum he accrued on the estimable avant-pop of 2003's HoboSapiens by adorning these new songs with such unflattering, generic alternarock textures that they often render their author unrecognizable at best, and irrelevant at worst.

Although songs like “King of Hearts,” a pummeling Eurodance stomper, or “Castle in the Sky,” another pummeling Eurodance stomper, might allude to urgency in their lyrics and music, they still feel totally anemic and bereft of passion.

Frankly, it could be much worse.

We Are A&C is feckless junk.

Drift is the sound of them trying to figure out what to do next--and compared to the maniacal focus and intensity of previous records, the band can sound oddly rudderless here. But they can still stun you with a radical reinvention.

In between appearances from Drake, Minaj, and Wayne-- who offers lukewarm verses and/or deranged-but-palatable Auto-Tune hooks on most tracks-- a slew of numbskulls, weirdos, and little kids sometimes make things interesting

That’s how Spring feels: a lot of planning, a shrug to finish. Like OK Human, this is a product of the pandemic. Unlike OK Human, it actually sounds like it.

Unless you approach Electronica 1 as a collection of unrelated songs designed to be cherry-picked for playlists--and given the generic title, maybe that's the point--there's little to hold it together.

The duo’s sense of freedom and unwillingness to mimic the tropes of conventional songwriting are to be admired, even if they’re not necessarily traits that will convince anyone but ardent early-Reich fans that drumming records are worthy of a place on their shelf.

At 14 tracks in roughly an hour, Wasteland, Baby! falls prey to the humdrum, all its power wrung dry.

Yeat’s linguistic flair has kept him from tipping over into the infinitely derivative personalities of Balenciaga-wearing, blank-Instagram-feed-having twentysomethings, but LYFESTYLE sometimes gets awfully close to the edge. Still, his heavy-handed punch-ins are hefty enough to make a couple dents.

Though it's lightweight, Rewolf gives me a bit of hope that they'll push themselves outward a bit more next time.

Speak isn’t exactly a step forward or a step back, but more to the side, onto a new path with plenty of potential, as well as room for future improvements.

Over a decade into his career, Greene is more than capable of producing technically interesting music that comes across as deceptively simple. Unfortunately, Purple Noon falters and feels too safe and lacking in substance.

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.

It's all about finding the friendly turtles at the end of the druggy rainbow, yet, since no one's in a hurry to get there, the songs loop along with space between the beats and guitarists who still seem to be learning their craft.

This isn't the Latyrx that won over backpackers and Cali-funk fans back in '97--far from it. It's not much of a reunion, that's for sure, and sixteen years is a long time to wait for a sophomore slump.

Rather than excavating weird, uncommercial offcuts from the Ray of Light sessions, this is a slight release that collects seven remixes, most widely available, as well as one demo left off the 1998 album.

The individual entries on Grinderman 2 are all over the map quality-wise, from inert and utterly ignorable... to half-brilliant reframings of pretty singular material.

When it comes down to it, there's a very poorly kept secret about this band that will likely determine what you think of Dark On Fire: some of these lyrics are just borderline retarded, combining rhyme-first, ask-questions-never couplets with more arson imagery than a Thursday album.

Sixth studio outing Beat the Devil's Tattoo is already getting billed as the one that brings all these prodigal sons' (and daughters'-- ex-Raveonette Leah Shapiro is now on drums) stylistic detours back home. It kind of is, but if BRMC's sound has cohered, their songwriting has unfortunately done the opposite.

Nothing here bears the strain of overzealous ambition, there are no flubbed notes, unseemly textures, unfortunate lyrical ideas; everything positive or negative about Breathing Statues is simply too ephemeral to make a fuss about.

I don't know what exactly it says about Paul Banks, but the most borderline-embarrassing tracks on Skyscraper are, in fact, the strongest--it's the safe, formulaic moments that fall flat and, unfortunately, make up a substantial portion of the record.

Ironically, if there is one thing holding these songs back, it's Lyrics Born himself. Shimura spits sparingly, often just to shake a little life into the imaginary crowd once the groove settles.

Slapping a brand new bag on these pasty-white-dude tunes more often bombs than not.

It would sound overproduced for 1998 yet seems curiously rinky-dink compared to the current pop maximalism of any continent; Scott & Rivers splits most of its time between ruthlessly utilitarian power pop and midtempo, jangly acoustic alt-rock that reimagines the break between Pinkerton and the Green Album as one where Cuomo ditched Harvard for higher education in the form of Stroke 9 or Eve 6 CDs.

Surely, we can do better for the platonic ideal of a rock band than four guys gunning for a spot rightfully inhabited by My Morning Jacket but instead coming up with the best songs 3 Doors Down never wrote.