There’s plenty of substance to be found here if you look hard enough.

Under the wing of producer Kevin McMahon, the duo was able to flesh out arrangements and let their music mature.

Disclosure’s second album was never going to be as huge and loud and groundbreaking as Settle. So rather than lamenting the loss, check out what you’re missing. Because what you’re missing is terrific.

Roosevelt listens less like a dynamic pop album and more like a static soundtrack that only becomes more and more significant as time goes on.

It might take you a couple of spins to fully appreciate Boo Boo. At times, it’s very slow-moving, and some of Bear’s experiments don’t land. ... Don’t let the more experimental qualities keep you from listening to the record, though.

What we have instead is a brooding, oddly sequenced, and scattered collection that defies easy categorization.

As a whole, the transitions are a bit choppy and sudden, digging away at the coherence of the album.

Stuff Like That There is Yo La Tengo’s gentlest album by far. It’s also their least eclectic, which is to say their most samey-sounding. Summer Sun wasn’t dynamically varied either, but it had color and texture--pools of it! Stuff Like That There is just as consistent, but not nearly as rich.

It’s a hearty mix, but that’s not to communicate that Superorganism are just good curators, they also are fresh creators.

An easy criticism to level at St. Catherine is that it breaks no ground, that Mondanile can probably pen these kind of fuzzy and meandering ditties in his sleep. That might be true, but St. Catherine’s highpoints will hypnotize and hold sway long enough to keep you entranced until Mondanile’s next contribution.

Love is Free makes a seriously compelling case that the EP should be the standard form of pop-music communication. Robyn’s latest is all killer, no filler, and leaves you begging for more.

Uptown Special exhibits a long-playing cohesion missing from his prior output. The sense of free-wheeling fun, however, is largely absent with the exception of the record’s funky A-side trifecta.

Neither engaging enough to be exhilarating, nor boisterous enough to be obnoxious, Perpetual Surrender simply gazes at its shoes without making much of an impression at all.

The songs are intricately built but they also feel distinctly impermanent; little snippets of soft static open and close a number of tracks, like the songs are coming in and out focus.

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.

Static lacks variety. It’s just a short-fused, gloomy rehash, and what little has been changed isn’t really an improvement.

Ultimately, the bigged up production doesn’t suit .Paak’s soulful tendencies, which are further lost in his switch to rap. There are a few highlights, sure, but not nearly enough for an artist who I would’ve placed bets would be the next Big Thing.

Poliça flirt with greatness often enough to make Shulamith more than worth your time, but it’s not as brave as we’d like it to be.

Aitchison intelligently pairs her clever lyrics against beats that push genres outward, her filling in the spaces with her hooks and gigantic personality.

No Age may not have delivered another knockout, but An Object compensates for its shortcomings by being a mature and often moving album, a first for the duo.

All of Weber’s best qualities as a producer are on display on The Triad, his fourth album and first in six years. But The Triad also reveals a previously unforeseen Achilles’ heel: the guy doesn’t have a clue what to do with vocals.

By Death Grips’ standards, the first disc is significantly less dynamic than the second.... Jenny Death represents another step forward for Death Grips, a group that seems to have walked over the horizon and out of sight albums ago.

The end result is 40 minutes of music that drain the listener’s energy and will.

Moth is a breezy, immensely enjoyable pop record that provides just the amount of pep that you’ll need to make it through the winter.

It’s a heartfelt, narcotic odyssey through the seductive pleasures of lava lamps and black light posters, a kind of escapism that comes in the same strange, silk-screened colors as the novelty lighters and t-shirts one might find at a backwoods southwestern gas station.

Tomorrow’s Hits carries on the classic rock torch, for better or worse.

Despite the growth it signifies for Mount, and the candor with which he delivers it, Love Letters is so lightly sketched that it never fully engages on a gut level.

Though Body Music contains only one true misfire (the immediately forgettable “Kaleidoscope Love”), the album’s strongest tracks glow so bright that fine songs such as “Diver,” “Lost and Found” and “Bad Idea” can get lost in their shadow, at least on early listens.

While Wolf’s Law has a few lulls, such as the syrupy, “The Turnaround,” and some of the prog moments like “The Leopard and the Lung,” run too long, the best moments shine.

His chillwave sensibilities remain, but they’re bolstered by more direct elements from the popular hip-hop and disco funk sounds of today.

FIDLAR will make you want to pound a case of the cheapest beer you can find with these guys, it’ll make you want to crank it up as loud as it will go in whichever of your friends’ cars.

A record that’s all too often content with mediocrity even though its finest moments reveal just how close it came to greatness.

What Avalanche may lack in immediacy, it makes up for with the gloss and professionalism that coats each of its songs like a gossamer gown. The quality of Hannibal’s handiwork and the sheer passion of Coco’s vocals speak for themselves.

Crosswords, as a collection of loose leaves, doesn't have the weight of Grim Reaper but that also means it doesn't have the pressure. Crosswords is something you can just consume without trying to wring every inch of intent out of it.

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.

While of Montreal aren’t exactly strutting 2007-style again, their tweaked, re-energized sound has them strutting nonetheless. And that’s what they do best.

El Camino was the sound of The Black Keys flexing their muscles as they reached for that sword, but Turn Blue is the sound of The Black Keys baring their soul and testing the parameters.

The campy Scooby Doo spookiness that inspires Slasher Flicks’ aesthetic is so charming and irresistible that Enter the Slasher House regularly succeeds despite its faults.

It’s a better seasoned Feast of Love, yes. But when the wagon still has wheels, it’s hard to knock them for continuing to ride it. It’s still as smooth as it’s always been.

This is a mess of an indie pop album, filled to the brim with ambient interludes and a taste for unnecessary drum machines, but a mess that longs to make sense of itself.

In the absence of the chill-ed out R&B and funk that defined his early sound, Toro y Moi’s newest album just doesn’t stand out from an increasingly crowded field.

What truly works is the band’s commitment to the skeletal framework of their music, Thomas’ authoritative picking coupled with Hamilton’s lilting voice, a sultry whisper that conveys desolation and wistfulness, both of which play major roles in many of these songs.

Planetarium demands repeated listening, the passages and movements make individual songs stand out less as it is not completely obvious when one track is ending and another is beginning. The record almost sounds modular in the vein of Brian Wilson’s technique on Smile.

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.

MCIII is, in the end, the perfect sunny day album.

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.

This record’s closest counterpart is last year’s Currents from Tame Impala. Temples can’t quite reach pop solidarity like those Aussies, but they come close enough.

It’s bizarre, and at times beautiful, but overall it leaves a longing for some direction, some movement in this exploration of the abyss.

Dark Sky Paradise lacks cohesion as an album, but on a track-by-track basis, it positions Big Sean as a wonderfully versatile rapper whose personality and style hold together even as he adapts to a range of contexts.

Ghettoville’s return to some of the musical qualities of its 2008 predecessor gives new richness and power to Actress’s work.

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

They are engaging, but ultimately don’t have the same replay-ability as the classic Bevan stuff.

Given a dearth of hooks, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes demands a decent set of headphones to appreciate its foremost asset, technical construction.... Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes disappoints most when it approximates ordinary song structures.

Too True proves that Dum Dum Girls are as relevant today as they were six years ago because they know that evolution is the key to survival. This is their sound, the sound of today, and they wear it well.

As an artist revisiting a previous masterwork, he’s chosen to add maturity in all the wrong spots. Lowbrow nods interspersed with pointed criticisms of nearly everyone of note made Eminem a star, but most of the references and insults here feel dated. It’s about as timely as catching up on last year’s episodes of TMZ on your DVR.

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.

Its songwriting, production, and delivery harbor no risks, and therefore the album safely passes by its listeners without leaving anything but a want for something a little more lively.

A harmless, infectious rock record that channels the sounds and concerns of a more innocent, less technologically complicated time.

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.

All told, it’s another win in both artists’ books, but a mild one.

By scaling back from the overambitious sentiments of albums since 21st Century Breakdown and returning to the simple yet effective power chord structure of earlier Green Day, the trio manages to make Revolution Radio both personal and timely for a country going through the same sense of dislocation they themselves have all too recently experienced.

Thug’s entire approach to his music has never sounded so polished and potent as it sounds on Barter 6.

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.

So what has five years changed? Not much, in the best possible way. More smooth soul commentaries on sensuality and longing, more time shaped melodies and movements. The differences between their Woman and Blood are the subtle groove changes.

Taken solely as part of the Broken Bells discography it’s their best effort yet: a textured, kaleidoscopic pop record that crackles with imagination, and hints at the sign of something brilliant to come.

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”).

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.

Bankrupt! doesn’t inspire the covetousness of their early material, but rather it takes its natural place as an album to be consumed en masse by Phoenix’s hefty fan base.

Making music this fuzzy and wonderful is a notable feat. Making tunes that make you want to jump into a time-travelling DeLorean and materialise in yester-year, desperate to reenact the same wanton mistakes that you made the first time round? That’s a real achievement.

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.

Here, Sampha sounds comfortable and confident, showcasing his vocal prowess rather than merely living with it.

His third record perfectly distills Passion Pit’s mission statement to a mixture of musical nostalgia and energy that coalesces quite well with larger messages of accepting the past in order to embrace the future.

THR!!!ER is a remarkably fluid album, transitioning seamlessly between songs and only rarely getting mired in moments of subpar music.

Blade Of The Ronin is a well-crafted, entertaining, and moderately inspired follow-up that doesn’t do justice to the fourteen-year wait, but it reimagines Can Ox as competent storytellers rather than progressive geniuses.

It’s just a quick way to get to what’s relevant about them, an I.V. drip of catchy tunes from a time when your emotions were still raw and tender.

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.

This is a staggering return to form for the Glaswegian quartet, the sound of Franz Ferdinand coming home after a four year long absence--with the right thoughts, the right words, and the right album.

Foreverly offers many pleasures but would have been easier to swallow as a 6-song EP.

While 99¢ manages to find its footing at a number of points, it never manages to prop itself up as a whole.

Despite some glaring issues, Sept. 5th manages to stay listenable, and offers occasional glimpses of genuine inspiration.

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.

It’s not her best (nothing is quite like “Get Some”) but it’s a fresh change from an artist who gave us both subtle and surefire signs she might head in this direction.

The nonchalant attitude Wavves approaches music-making with provides a cap to the height it can reach in terms of producing something truly excellent or groundbreaking. However, that’s kind of the whole point.

It’s been well over a decade since Julian Casablancas & Co. have released an album as taut and wasted and sexy as Anthems for Doomed Youth.

Strangers isn’t bottled lightning like The Moon & Antarctica or The Lonesome Crowded West, nor does it contain a magnitude 9 single like Good News or Ship, but its unwieldy stature and combative stance compliments Modest Mouse’s storied discography.

He now realizes he is as much part of the product as the music he makes and seems happy to be taking a backseat to the performers he’s enlisted for his fifth studio album. At no point do Harris’ sandpapery vocals scrape against the beat; this time he lets his beats do the talking.

The album’s 12 bloated, mostly mid-tempo tracks drone on and on, and even when they aren’t technically long they sometimes feel like they might never end because most of them fail to find a hook.

A perfect pop soundtrack for the summer search for perfect love.

In the end, What a Time reminds us that music is best when it’s enjoyed when in the company of others. It’s a project that demands that the listener live vicariously through it and looks to give hope through music to those willing to listen. Nothing more, nothing less.

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.

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.

It’s light, jangly, and just right for the summer at the end of this wintry tunnel.

If another goal of art could be said to remove humanity, if only for a moment, from the physical world by using the tools of the very same physical world, Interiors has followed all the rules of architecture to make a building that floats.

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

A widely varied and ultimately satisfying record.

The album is good, which is a component never worth underscoring. But it could be much more than that.

It’s all over the place, but in a good way. After all, when two people come together to create one identity, it makes sense for that identity to be a bit mercurial.

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