Mostly though, Pusha seems lost.

A disappointing missed opportunity.

What you get, then, is an album that may have a sonic breadth, but really only two sides: one of sweet pop tunes, and one of strange goof-offs.

Your enjoyment of this album will depend on how open you are to cats meowing, telephone rings, and French spoken-word passages weaving in and out of the songs.

Scab Dates does an adequate job of capturing what is best experienced in the flesh.

There are few compelling reasons to listen to The Exchange Session Vol. 2 more than once.

Quarantine The Past, a "best of" compilation designed for those who didn't experience the band at the right age (a group that is now well out of college), attempts to put the band's best musical face forward.

Shock Value isn't a perfect album, but it does possess various charms.

Even at its best, and it gets pretty damn good, such as on the stark "Black Sweat" and the rock single, "Fury," the record still sounds like it's stuck somewhere in the past.

Just Like the Fambly Cat sounds like a Grandaddy album, but only in that it rehashes everything the band has already done.

Brown is riding on the coattails of artists greater than he is, but he is clearly a talented performer who can deliver high-octane club hits.

An album that while fun, often stagnates no matter how much the trio push things into the red.

Be Still Please occasionally falls victim to over-orchestration. But McCaughan proves too much of an indie-rock veteran and pro to let that sink the entire album.

Passively waiting to be noticed, Holopaw’s second album, Quit +/or Fight, is like the kid who never raises his hand in class but whom everyone knows is the smartest in the room.

All the Why? hallmarks are there, but the album just lacks effusive energy or emotional rawness needed to bring it all to life.

Archive acts as this brief glimpse into the evolution of a celebrated songwriter and a band, yet with the quality and the high level of music geekery required, it's obvious that this one's intended for the superfans.

If Sea Drum/ House of Sun was the debut album from some little-known psych act, I’d be hailing it as one of the year’s best records.... But from the Boredoms, Seadrum/House of Sun is nothing special.

Unfortunately, Sigel has taken a step away from reconciling the truth on his fourth full-length, The Solution. Instead of shedding the one-note dimension of his popular Broad Street Bully persona, he simply cloaks himself in another unconvincing and uninteresting trope: the mack-lover.

The album is a tightrope walker, constantly straddling the line between sincerity and unapologetic rocking.

Diamond Hoo Ha is by no means a return to the band’s glory days, but it at least offers a simple reminder of their talent for writing energetic, hook-laden pop songs.

Black Mesa ventures deep into individuality but it's ultimately a fever dream that's more accessible to the man who created it rather than to an audience.

Kweli shows again that he deserves the respect he receives, but Eardrum is simply not cohesive enough.

Music that's built more around the image earnest and honesty than musicality can definitely be a powerful thing, but that's just the problem: It's either powerful or it's not. On Year in the Kindgom, J. Tillman is either a soothsaying troubdaour, or he's not.

Ghetto Bells finds Chesnutt running the gauntlet -- string-laden balladry, desert folk-rock, thumb-piano noodling.

There aren't any real missteps, but neither is How We Operate a step forward.

By merely keeping up, they don't do much to separate themselves from the flock of young bands crossing the Atlantic -- again and again.

In the future, the guys in Jurassic 5 need to do a better job picking their friends and their song subjects.