This is the most disjointed record in Weezer’s discography. Its probably not the worst but its right there with Raditude and Make Believe.

For an album with both a Eurythmics cover AND a Black Sabbath cover it’s a surprisingly listenable, albeit pointless entry in their discography, Weezer has spent a decade becoming more interesting to read about than listen to.

The aquatic theme of the album is appropriate and in line with the atmosphere Lennox’s quirky, gentle guitar-plucking consistently evokes. But this, nor the occasional flashes of beauty throughout the album, are enough to recommend Buoys’ unremarkable lonely beach music.

His flow has gotten really same-y over the years: “Sandra’s Rose” occasionally recalls “Weston Road Flows” and the following “Talk Up” brings “Gyalchester” to mind. It’s also weird that the R&B disc comes with so little hooks, something we used to be able to count on Drake for. It doesn’t help that Drake really likes his minimalistic beats.

Lyrically, High as Hope forsakes Welch’s knack for vibrant imagery and symbolism for more human modifiers and concerns. While it allows her to share more personal information, Welch’s straightforward songwriting means there are no “Howl”’s or “Ship to Wreck”’s present here. ... Despite these critiques, High as Hope surpasses many of them to solidify itself as a decent record.

Liberation never reaches the heights fans likely wanted from Xtina, it serves as a pleasant refresher for a voice that has earned its place in the annals of pop history. That said, it’s a bit sad to feel like her finest moments are, at least for now, also in her past.

A record this nondescript’s just detracting from what we could be listening to instead.

Songs like this [“Adam and Eve”]--and “Stay” from Life is Good--suggest that Nas might’ve done better had he picked slower, more melancholic beats and rapped like the elder statesman he is, rather than whatever we actually got on the record.

Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino is the best possible kind of average record, one that goes out swinging. One that goes for it on every level. A record that, although it isn’t great by any typical metric, is extremely curious and entertaining.

Jack White missed, but in the best possible way. As weak as this record is, its extremely entertaining.

The highlights aren’t as colorful as we’ve come to expect from Timbaland or the Neptunes, or as tuneful as we’ve come to expect from Justin Timberlake.

Ruins isn’t a bad record, or a weak one, it’s a boring one.

There’s just too many wasted opportunities, like the peculiar absence of Zaytoven (would it not have been nice to hear Thugger over Zay’s keys?) and Metro Boomin (who has produced beats for both); the usually reliable Mike Will Made It hands in a severely underutilized vocal sample on “Mink Flow” and collects his paycheck.

This record is diet U2. Its pop-rock disguised as Important Rock and the disguise is transparent. “Blackout” and “You’re The Best Thing About Me” are the chief offenders.

Reputation is, too often, an ugly sounding album. But Taylor Swift has a superhuman knack for a stunning melody. Many of these songs are downright sweet.

This is the kind that makes you want to go back and listen to his older stuff, if only to remind you he’s capable of wonders.

At the end of it, this record is a mixed bag. Fans of Weezer’s poppier side will find plenty to like. Whereas fans of Weezer’s more well regarded records will wish they chose another producer.

Colors is the opposite of The Information. The first time you listen to it, you know its average and you keep listening, begging it to give something that hasn’t had its edges shaved off by a production style that strips all weird aesthetics in favor of aerodynamics that no one wanted and no one will like.

Although the overall album lacks cohesion, Double Dutchess’ sonic diversity does remind you of Fergie’s versatility as a performer, one who spits, warbles, and belts all across the project. The only thing is, she brings little innovation or excitement to the many genres she channels.

Haiku From Zero has none of its strength in songs or clarity of goal. The electro-funk mixed with the alternative dance and light tropicalia percussion ends up tasting like pizza and pie and popsicles all at the same time. It isn’t that this record is bad, its just meh.

On Wonderful Wonderful, there are glimpses of that ambition on an otherwise routine album from a top-notch band on autopilot. But if the Killers want to capture the moment like they did a decade ago, they’ll have to want it more.

While Mensa’s flow is capable enough (especially on the opening two tracks, which are some of the album’s best), he also indulges in some painfully cheesy lines, from references to television shows long dead (“Tryna take over the world like Pinky and the Brain”) no matter how ham-fisted (“If she see her name, she get Goku tough”).

Whereas previous shifts in sound were organic, the product of natural growth, this one comes off as obligatory and cheap, as if there were nowhere else to go. For the first time in their career, Arcade Fire haven’t made a record; they’ve manufactured one.

It can be taken as a full listen, and it rolls along easily enough, but most likely listeners will just queue the songs they like and ignore the rest of the filler.

A lack of feeling behind much of Witness’ material does a listener no favors, and much of it gets forgotten once you leave it in your rear-view. However, if you take Witness less seriously, it reveals itself a bit of camp that is in many ways more compelling than the music project it’s supposed to be.

As their original creative well starts to run dry, Relaxer’s experimentalism suggests that Alt-J will continue to struggle with other styles.

Forest Swords' second record is simplistic on purpose, but that doesn’t make it feel less empty.

The main pitfall of this record is its pacing. Bob’s best moments are lightning fast, like the 28 tracks in 41 minutes Alien Lanes. By contrast, this record is 32 tracks in 71 minutes. Its top moments are when it is moving the fastest.

The problem with The Ride is just that it’s a lot duller than it should be, and it feels even more disappointing given that her most successful work is also her most eccentric.

They do work up some magic every now and then.

Despite the glorious melodies hidden within so many of these tracks, like the opening duo of “Name for You” and “Painting a Hole”, huge potential is undermined by ham-fisted executions and depths you could wade through.

The supple dynamic shadings of earlier Projectors material is gone; everything’s annoyingly crisp, with lots of things at the front of the mix that shouldn’t be and Longstreth’s pitch-shifted voice running near-constantly throughout.

It’s a solid record and one that’s sure to please fans, myself included, even if it doesn’t meet the highs of its predecessor.

In striving for consistency, he sacrifices discretion and intention.

As it stands, Hang isn’t an unpleasant listen, but it’s an oddly frustrating one.

It’s well-produced, clean and unobjectionable. Rennen fits this bill nicely, if that’s what you’re looking for. But regardless of whether it’s something you want, it’s nothing you need.

On Oczy Mlody they play out like a teenager trying to write a paper while he is high. The lyrics range from vaguely inspiring to cringe inducing, but just like their underrated At War With the Mystics, the record finishes with three strong tracks in a row.

It isn’t so much that this record is weak as it is well trodden, and the recipe is out.

It’s simultaneously daunting, exhausting, terrifying, all at the same time. It’s all a lot to take in, with not a whole lot of the Gambino we are familiar with to help wash it down.

An underwhelming record. Kitschy 70’s synths and live drums abound throughout. The lyrics and vocals continue to distract from the true draw of the production.

Ultimately, Ping Pong, is a disappointing step for a once promising garage rock act. I guess we can still go back and listen to our old Smith Western’s records.

Nobody’s asking Kings of Leon to reinvent the wheel here, but they could at least make their hubcaps a bit flashier.

It’s not breaking news that reunion music isn’t a revelation, but this album seems worse than the merely dull crop of new Owen material.

Overall, no risks are taken: all of the lyrics want to be mantras but end up as little nothings instead; practically all of the songs reveal their hands way before their often too-long song lengths; they mistake reverb as a songwriting tool.

They’re neither particularly evocative nor pleasant to listen to, meaning they fail at being ambient music in all respects but slipping into the background.

As a mixtape, I understand why Campaign sounds so derivative, but still I wish Griffin had pushed a bit further in terms of musical experimentation.

Blood Bitch commits the ultimate crime of all so-called concept albums: there is undeniable effort in the subject and story it was supposed to tell, but little magic in the execution.

The first product from Crystal Castles 2.0 is a mixed bag of nostalgia, proficiency, and carefully staged continuity.

In trying so desperately to be universal, they’ve ended up with their most stiflingly insular album yet.

The genre-spanning approach dilutes what could have been a memorable project, leaving 32 Levels with a storage of untapped potential and only a few beacons shining their fullest light.

IV feels subdued and professional, something you would never expect to associate with the quartet.

There are over-arching problems here: the lyricism that doesn’t relate to anyone except the singer, which is especially troubling on the mostly lyric-driven “Widow’s Peak”; the lack of color from the lugubrious and minimalistic approach (excepting the vocal shading of “Joe’s Dream” and the Western-tinged “Honeymooning Alone”); the dearth of melodies, make the relatively short album get wearying over time, especially when you add the too-pristine production.

Some passable stuff here, mostly confined to the second half.

Good Luck and Do Your Best is dull, an affair that lacks curiosity because the answers are in front of him. None of the production is outright bad, just done before by the likes of Four Tet, Nujabes, and John Talabot.

Will is a wobbly baby step from a well-honed sound to something greater. There’s not much reason to listen to it over any of her other albums, and it’s less interesting for the music it contains than the music it promises.

Yes, Views is both overlong and underwhelming. But there’s a glimmer of something more poignant beneath its bloated surface.

The sparks of great art are there, but the brain behind the creation lays dormant. Time will tell where Domo goes, and honestly Genesis isn't a bad beginning.

Not To Disappear is an intermittently pretty affair with painfully little substance, an album that spends so much time wallowing in its own self-indulgent loneliness that it fails to offer up anything listeners can actually relate to.

Clocking in at roughly 47 minutes across a charitable eighteen tracks, Always Strive and Prosper does not seem to break any new ground.

Add production issues that have marred the bulk of their discography to the lack of tune and we have something that never lifts off: everything sounds mixed at the same level, resulting in mush.

It feels disjointed and incomplete.

Cuomo seems to have found his commercial home embracing a beach-party rock flavor for California kids who’ll “throw you a lifeline” and “show you the sunshine”, and indeed the beach tone persists through the album. This should be fine and modest, but in Weezer’s hands it’s just too overbearingly gross-sounding to let off that easy.

Vroom Vroom might have worked had Charli written some better hooks, or actually put some effort into her raps, or just not rapped at all. Or if even Charli had coasted, just as she does here, and Sophie taken the reins.

“Kevin” and “White Privilege II”, obvious attempts to spark political discourse, see an artist not afraid to speak his mind. It makes meme-chasing moments like “Brad Pitt’s Cousin” and “Dance-Off” all the more forgettable.

Throughout ColleGrove, the dominant statement that seems to be made is one of discordancy and dullness. Wherever these two succeed, there is always an antithesis to mute the momentum.

EVOL is the first time we begin to hear the ostensible rigidity in Future's formula revealing itself.

There’s honestly no real low moment on Life of Pause, but then again, low moments were never this album’s problem. The problem is that there’s really only one high moment.

The only thing that comes through is that it’s competent. That’s enough to be pretty, but it still has the unremarkable safety of a band that hasn’t broken through to find a distinct voice.

Is the Is Are is certainly honest, but it could use a little more optimism, and the music’s circuitousness only adds to the feeling that a single issue is being poked and prodded to exhaustion.

Rarely does The Documentary 2 feel, or sound, important enough to warrant a double album, especially not one that spans three hours. The Documentary 2 perhaps works best when Game suffuses tracks with growing pains.

Del Rey has struggled to back up her provocations with substance. Ultraviolence was an exception, a singular breakthrough. Honeymoon is, sadly, a slip and fall after a promising stride forward.

It finds Prince embracing EDM and his band 3rd Eye Girl lays down some sturdy, derivative grooves that ought to signal bathroom breaks and beer runs at shows to come.

Ostensibly their pop record, this brisk, 29-minute album album runs out of ideas in the first ten.

Throughout, tracks will leave you with a noticeably bittersweet aftertaste--although it isn’t exactly lacking in flavor. It’s as though the album is missing a secret ingredient, or doesn’t ever find the right blend.

Secondhand Rapture was inconsistent and uneven at points, but it also drew some power from its unpredictability. Its successor is twelve straight tracks of mostly the same thing: worn pop clichés. This dullness plagues the album from start to finish despite Plapinger’s best attempts at shouting through the monotony.

The record’s occasionally bright moments are swallowed up by scattered thoughts and stale beats.

Even if we were to give ALLA’s abysmal lyrics a pass, the production doesn't help, either.... Still, Rocky can, at times, be an engaging figure that radiates charisma when he wants.

Chrissybaby Forever is the music of Owens’ heart--unfiltered and unpolished, both to its credit and its detriment.

The fun here is manufactured beyond belief, sometimes for better, but more often for worse.

The album doesn’t take nearly enough risks.

Born Under Saturn is only intermittently gripping. Certain tracks feel heavily procedural and oddly joyless given the album’s lighthearted tone.

The art-rock band’s third LP Infinite House combines tentative dips into R&B and soul with a firm foundation in jittery, spindly, angular NYC rock, resulting in pop songs with a deliberately nervous, ungainly, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel to them.

Discarding the albums actually awesome opener, “No Room in Frame”,--which briefly had me hoping for some tangible musical progress from the band--Kintsugi is more or less 45 minutes of boy-next-door, paint-by-number indie pop

This is Diamandis’ break-up album in more ways than the romantic sense. She also severs ties with popular expectation, and the end result is regressive rather than revolutionary.

If you never liked APTBS, odds are you’re not about to start here.

Despite its numerous shortcomings though, it’s a difficult album to completely dislike--largely because of its wistful, nostalgia-inducing melodies. But it’s impossible not to expect better from the former Oasis mastermind.

At its best, Rebel Heart has an ease, and a long absent softness, qualities sorely missed since her last masterwork Music. For every godawful moment, which come and go with a sad frequency on Rebel Heart, there are glimmers of virtuosity buried within the overworked mess.

The issue is in direction, and the real issue is that there doesn’t seem to be any.

The density of Tetsuo & Youth just could have benefitted from even the slightest dose of levity to throw its rhetoric and messages into sharper relief.

Almost thirty producers were affiliated with the album, yet the music is shockingly simple.

What’s unfortunate is that songs the group co-wrote are the weakest ones here. The exception is the aforementioned lead single, a Journey-inspired ballad that’s catchy regardless of how much my instincts demand instant dismissal. The other slower, anthemic numbers on the album are not nearly as inspired.

A misstep, to be sure, but even more troubling is that Foxygen have distended from tight, trim retro-pop to unkempt, unfocused conceptual goo in less than two years.

In finding their way back to what works, it too often sounds rehashed to make it a true return to form the band has been yearning to find.

Alt-J remain impossible to put a pin in, which makes This Is All Yours almost as frustrating as it is absorbing.

When every song is short and recorded in the same minimalistic style, it often feels like just when you’re starting to get into a song, you’re immediately whisked away to another idea, to another moment that should have been spent finishing that first thought that now will never be finished.

Banks’ debut, sometimes promising and even wonderful, could have been revelatory.

The best offerings here are “Blind Faze” and “2 Shy”, Fleetwood-fashioned tracks that sway playfully, celebratory in their own modest way. The rest doesn’t hit hard enough, and doesn’t even really seem like it wants to.

Atmospherically, Barragán falls to a part of the spectrum Blonde Redhead have never found themselves on before, but half of the songs here feel like placeholders for ideas that haven’t been fully excavated.