Ash & Ice is an album of quality comedown tracks surrounded by run-of-the-mill rockers that plateau instead of peak.

There’s just enough to think about without getting fatigued, as the Strokes continue to toy with the sound of their late period.

Get In was recorded last year, but it sounds like it could have been made at any time over the intervening decade.

What doesn’t work as much are the attempts to make Masterpiece feel overly homemade.

By embracing the expanse, his music has gotten bigger, and more universal.

With its variations in mood, tone, and personnel, Basses Loaded plays more like compilation of B-sides culled from multiple recording sessions spanning several years.

Whitney might not reinvent anything, but they sound perfect right now, and it’s hard to argue with being in the right place at the right time.

When Krug sticks to his strengths—off-the-beaten-path keyboard-driven rock n’ roll, with taut, wiry tunes that match his voice and wry wit--he generally succeeds. But his tendency to slow it down and draw it out leads him to take risks that often don’t pay off.

Despite Dâm’s preference for playing tracks pretty much all the way through--which suggests an infectious, wide-eyed passion for the music that fits into his mind-control powers--the mix is properly appreciated as a whole.

Finally, albeit in flashes, there are hints that Fifth Harmony may reach that peak.

Backed by an all-star band that notably includes Wilco’s Glenn Kotche and Megafaun’s Phil Cook, Tyler is able to summon a wide range of moods, from plaintive pastoral folk to a particular kind of kosmische American music that fuses Brad Cook’s spacey synths and Luke Schneider’s gorgeous pedal steel like a slow, steady breeze on a hot summer day.

[“Wall Fuck” is] short and snappy, gone too fast in an album that could’ve been streamlined to let moments like it shine. But maybe it’s the sound of floodgates opening.

His words come off poetically, and in its totality, Ology is a slow burn that grows more infectious as it plays.

At its best, the casual atmosphere makes for one of Kozelek’s loosest, lightest collections to date: something to throw on when you don’t have the emotional capacity for his more distinctive albums.

Congrats isn’t incoherent in its diversity, it just never seems to build on itself--the record lacks a definitive peak, and most of the individual tracks tend to just state their main idea fairly early on.

Folding Time serves as a stopgap for an aging sound without a firm grasp on its bearings. Should Sepalcure continue writing from their fixed point, they'll have to project further and further from its origin.

The results resemble dance music as glimpsed through a funhouse mirror: strangely distorted, sometimes goofy, and deeply pleasing on a simple, almost childlike level.

A trio of cuts toward the middle of Everything’s Beautiful suffers from feeling less robustly reimagined than the rest of the set--placing a slight drag on momentum.

Frankly, the energy and intensity that’s channeled into the first half of The Dream is Over feels utterly impossible, especially given the subject matter. But even at 31 minutes, Babcock’s relentless self-loathing can go from intoxicating to simply toxic.

What’s missing, though, is the central promise of a supergroup: the thrill of hearing established musicians in a truly different context. Minor Victories’ lineup may stem from different circles, but their approaches are so complementary that there’s rarely any tension or surprise.

The clear ambition of X-Communicate is to leave Welchez’s old persona behind and emerge, fresh and new, as something completely different, and by and large, that objective is achieved.

Mosey isn’t all gloom, though it boasts plenty of excellent bummer songs.

On Kidsticks, she no longer sounds like she has anything left to prove, which is precisely what's allowed her to make the riskiest album of her career. And she sounds like she's had the time of her life making it, too.

Simply put, the playing is more ambitious and varied on Goodness than on Home, Like NoPlace Is There, an album where the narrative drama manifests into some of the rawest anthems of unhinged youth and crippling self-loathing recorded this decade.

Enjoyable as it is, EP 4 does seem like smart risk management, a test run that confirms that whatever the group comes up with won’t be a Pixies-style disaster. As such, the rewards are modest.

The uneasy beats on Taste are part of what give that album its kick. Guitarist Geordie Gordon and drummer Adam Halferty also make both albums richer by providing dense textures and strong background vocals.

Should I Remain… is lighter, looser and more concise, in the same way that you refine your story once you’ve tried telling it a few times.

Earrings Off! is filled with these sorts of growing pains, ones that hopefully point to brighter pastures sometime soon for this promising band.