Dipping into her lower register, she stuns as a contralto. I found myself rewinding her runs on hymnal parts of “Heart on My Sleeve” and could’ve sworn I was levitating during the awe-inspiring bridge of “Pray It Away” and “Make It Look Easy.” ... The emotionally charged conversational interludes and narrative intros (“Do you ever wonder, like, who else is fucking your man?”) are out of place amid the redundant themes and mind-numbingly online songwriting.

I’d argue that 4L and Up 2 Më are bolder than anything here: Yeat’s older projects threw you into the deep end of his magma flows and fuzzy world-building and asked that you either get it or don’t. An album this safe and familiar will be great for packing out bigger concert venues but only makes his musical identity more nebulous.

It's not innovative, but it's deliberate and economic, with no filler and an inviting dose of Sly Stone-derived soul.

Rado might be derivative, but at least there’s an admirable consistency to his prodigious output.

As with nearly every R. Kelly album, sex is Untitled's raison d'être. But too often here he trips over trends.

A good deal of this album sounds like it could've been recorded by a lone foot-stomping folksinger, carrying over the intimate, around-the-kitchen-table ambience of Ebert's 2011 solo release, Alexander.

The music feels wedged between weight classes--too ridiculous to be indie rock and too ponderous and generic for Top 40 pop.

In the Lonely Hour comes from a personal place, it doesn't end up feeling like a very personal record.

The songs are generally slow, samey, and sleep-inducing, and the lyrics, any language differences notwithstanding, are hard to take seriously, even for a guy who raved about I'm From Barcelona.

With a more imaginative compiler--and fewer Big Names whose fame peaked years ago-- Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited could have turned out so much different.

Like Hardcore, A Wrenched Virile Lore features 10 tracks, though it only references eight of the originals. However, even the mixes that draw from the same songs are different enough in approach and sequenced in such a way that the reappearances feel like purposeful reprises.

Fragments of Freedom is a consistent and predictable stylistic overhaul into hyphenated hipster pop for people who actually liked Cibo Matto's last album. It fits the form to a T, right down to the brief, pointless Biz Markie cameo.

At its worst, this project is just plain retarded.

Future Bible Heroes frontman Chris Ewen just isn't a Merritt-caliber composer, and this EP suffers in comparison to the Magnetic Fields.

Awe is in the ear of the beholder, sure, but after being predictably pounded into the ground for half an hour by Rodriguez-Lopez/Hill et al. and their bag of heavy tricks, it's hard to tell if we're meant to walk away impressed or oppressed.

Much of Happiness Ltd. suffers from one of the cardinal sins of radio-ready rock: stuffing unmemorable verses between overblown choruses.

The aesthetics of her songs with Hershenow remain timid and careful.

After initially promising a return to form, 50 doesn't have the ability or initiative to hold the listener's interest over the long run.

Standouts struggle to hold their own amid the album's more overwrought anthems and straight-up misfires.

The Last Slimeto suppresses the knottiest and most uncomfortable aspects of his music, the moments when it feels like you’re hearing him process his darkest thoughts in real time. As a result the album is easier to digest, the songs less likely to stick out on a playlist, but at the price of the individuality that has made YoungBoy impossible to replicate.

Awful as it might be, Oskar is not easy to dismiss because awfulness has always been a part of Momus' gambit.

Doesn't extend the sound of the band's debut so much as inflate it.

Lyrically, Wolf is convincing when sticking to the grief-stricken script. It's when he goes off-book that things start to get awkward.

Ultimately, this particular dream is less one of flight or past glories, and more one of going to work and finding you've forgotten your trousers.

There are moments of considered writing and bursts of Drake at or near his mischievous best, but in its middle, the record becomes inert, making the bits of self-conscious misanthropy scan as strained rather than gleeful, as if the id could be focus-grouped.

Before Wild Things, Brown scrapped an entire album that, from press indications, probably sounded a lot like Anxiety; neither she nor the people she said heard it was happy with the results, but one wonders if it was really that bad, or just not commercial and crowd-pleasing enough. Wild Things collapses over the strain to be both.

The thoroughly unenjoyable Paralytic Stalks might be a sign that Barnes should take some time off and let the inspiration come to him.

In a sense Turin Brakes do little wrong on Jackinabox aside from the occasional gooey outbursts of gaiety.