Where overbearing arrangements don’t get in the way, a cloying sentimentality does.

So yeah, the tricks are clever; unfortunately, musically, There's Me... is an overstuffed mess.

Without Panda Bear on board, Animal Collective lose the pop edge that has resulted in their most commercially successful music, but this isn’t a project for scoring hits. It’s a meditative, hypnotic experience, and it’s not without the sense of playfulness that has driven Animal Collective throughout their career.

Start and Complete ultimately achieves what it sets out to do, which is to place a song-oriented frame around another off-the-cuff session by these four disparate talents, who will no doubt spin off in a completely different direction should About Group reconvene.

A few brilliant left turns that feel almost accidental mixed in with a sort of end-times hunger for a top-40 audience that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Ultimately, they're at their most engaging when maintaining an ironic distance between subject matter and tone.

Ghosthorse and Stillborn tends toward lazy, meandering nothings.

In general, Talking to You sounds like an album that is gradually divorcing itself from history and geography, as the Twins learn to build on that West Coast sound to create something unique and personal. They're not there yet, but give them another tour.

Yes, Mink Car is crap. All the charms They Might Be Giants once seemed to possess have dissipated into a cloud of embarrassing awkwardness.

They've jettisoned nearly all their Strokes, Television, and other grab bag post-punk propensities, turning instead to adult alternative as a foundation for this late-20s midlife crisis. I guess if ya can't beat 'em, just quit and make soft rock!

Most of the seven tracks crammed between these fine bookends, including two undistinguished instrumentals, run together in a modal drone, lacking urgency or emotional inflection.

You can hear that weariness all throughout Play, which often finds him going back to his two favourite wells—wedding songs and “global” bangers—without much of the energy or good humor that made him so popular to begin with.

TP3 Reloaded is one of those albums where every song sounds like a radio single.

Bianchi's not much for such subtleties, emotional or rhetorical, which may suggest he'll have as much lovelorn electro-symphonic melodrama to recount on future albums as on those past and present.

We Can't Fly's stylistic knuckleballs lack just about everything we'd grown to love about Aeroplane: namely luxurious grooves and effortless cool.

There's a disarming simplicity and artlessness... with an increased emphasis on persistent pop melody over crafty wordplay.

The worst I can say about Dedication 4 is that there isn't one moment where I wouldn't rather be listening to the often mediocre originals. There are a dozen or so good punch lines scattered on D4, enough to make it fun enough for one listen

Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 simply demonstrates competence. Harris may say that this album is powered by fuck-you juice; it is as threatening as an Erewhon smoothie.

While Grey Oceans is less caustic than their other work, it still has that lay-it-all-on-the-line quality that's worked for Antony Hegarty, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom. The difference is that the album never feels like anything's at stake, whereas past records embraced experimentation at any cost.

Trilla, Rick Ross's inexplicable second album, is every bit a fatty contemporary American disaster.

As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy.

Problem is, for the second straight album, they do so with the same exact set of tools as every other band in this sphere. So critiquing Ritual threatens to be a process of listing obvious influences that's just as dull as actually listening to the thing.

The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.

The lyrics really don’t offer themselves up for much analysis, and they’re also sung in a way that lets you know your attention is best directed elsewhere.

Ghost rarely does get the hint, often left too slight and too self-important for it's own good.

While Tha Carter IV isn't the first indication that Wayne's finest verses are behind him, it is the most glaring.

In the context of Matt & Kim's discography, Lightning is inconsequential. Like an echo of an echo, there's nothing here that Matt & Kim haven't already done over and over again.

The new musicians forgo the gauzy, playful dilettantism of Euphemystic in favor of expansive pop marathons.