Honey's more fleshed-out productions show Millan has the ability to be engaging on her own, but they are too scarce to make this album anything more than a humble footnote.

In spite of its flaws, To the Races charms with its somber atmosphere.

In contrast [to 'Donuts'], The Shining is more of a general audience record, by virtue of its song-length tracks and pervasive vocals from Dilla and his crew. As such, it presents challenges that Donuts didn't.

With the oddball charisma toned down and the lens zooming in on Kelis' melisma-adverse vocals, one is left with the sense that all of these songs could be bigger and more distinct, but it's hard to pinpoint how exactly. This drawback is also ultimately the album's draw: Given time to settle in, many of these songs are among Kelis's most charming, ingratiating themselves with surprising ease.

Like Infiniheart, Skelliconnection is undermined by seemingly random sequencing, still feeling more like a hodgepodge compilation than an album with a purposeful arc... But Skelliconnection still stands as an impressive document of VanGaalen's intuitive and inventive songwriting.

Classics is more varied in texture and tempo and tone than its predecessor. But aside from "Lex", a pretty obvious "Seventeen Years" rehash, and "Wildcat", which samples actual fucking panther roars, there are no curtain raisers, just a whole lot more suggestion.

This quartet's assured sound-and-fury is perplexingly difficult to care about.

When Kill Them With Kindness works it's because of Fein and Wraight's keen attention to melody and the way their voices complement one another and inject these songs with warmth and emotion.

For fans missing the pause-in-the-thunderstorm pregnant solitude of Songs:Ohia, Let Me Go will get you that fix you've been craving, a teasingly short half-hour reminder of his old persona.

For what it's worth, Waterloo goes round-for-round with Doherty's solo vehicle, but too much of its pop luster succumbs to could've/should've-been pathos, both lyrically and musically.

Just like last time around, Avatar is something for the plebes, the purists, the dabblers, and the old heads all at once-- a crossover in the best sense of the word.

One might suppose that solo album(s) from the chief Furnaces songwriter Matthew Friedberger would magnify his flaws/assets, and in the case of Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School, one would be correct.

Let's just say Tower of Love isn't out to offend or challenge or discomfit anyone. But the album's less simplistic than it comes on, obviously, its snugly melodies decorated with snaking structures and surprising instrumentation.

With its wealth of stellar collaborations, Brooklyn bodes well for the next full-fledged Wu LP, should it ever come to pass.

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

Too much of the album either throws the group into truly unflattering contexts or returns them to the hamster-wheel formalism they’ve been running into the ground for years now.

The idea that a producer of his caliber can’t put together something resembling a likeable LP-- particularly in light of his endlessly amusing Gangsta Grillz mixtape, In My Mind: The Prequel-- is insane. Here, he’s shot himself in the foot. Where the mixtape exploded with enthusiasm and wit, In My Mind the album is corroded and ineffectual. Worse, it’s predictable.

So no shocker then that One Day sounds less the work of punk provocateurs than a Keith Richards solo album: grizzled rock vets backed by a nominally gritty if too-well-rehearsed troupe of young(er) hired guns.

There's an impressive coherence on Derdang Derdang, showing how well ABO has developed an original and guiding aesthetic.

Putting the Days to Bed is a solid effort-- a step in a promising new direction.

I’m beginning to think it’s one of the smartest records-- musically and lyrically-- we’ll hear all year.

Personality is an immediate, alluring, and frequently arresting song cycle that plays to Steele's core strengths-- his dreamily effeminate voice and melancholic melodies-- while wisely abandoning Lovers' half-hearted attempts at mod garage-rock and electro-disco.

Erase Errata might not be as playful as they once were, but they're much better.

As menacing as it is hooky, this is some bracing stuff.

It is beautiful, emotive music, literally and figuratively entrancing.

An encouraging but ultimately disappointing contemplation of time's ceaselessness, love's promise, and Harvest-era Neil Young.

Unfortunately, as with music that draws from familiar musical influences, White Whale occasionally lapse into more predictable territory.

Whatever subtlety Germano's voice and lyrics might lack is buttressed by the deceptive simplicity of her music.