Once you’ve heard one track from Waterfall (ideally “Salt Carousel”), you’ve pretty much heard them all, and while such a lack of variety might not be a nuisance to a live audience, it’s a problem when a four-song, fifteen-minute EP already feels a little stale halfway through.

It feels disjointed and incomplete.

Where the album certainly succeeds, though, is in its crafting of a colorful, if a tad overlong, mission statement for a producer still only beginning to approach the extent of his potential.

hese Days… isn’t the kind of sharp-to-the-touch effort that one associates with excellent rappers who eschew the mainstream.... It’s the start of a conversation; and one can only hope that he plans on finishing it.

Individual melodies may not stick in your head, but Magnifique, as a complete work, offers a musical experience unavailable beyond Ratatat’s veteran production table.

Semicircle’s many pleasures--of melody, of tone color, of ideals never losing the beat--deserve an essay’s worth of exposition (no, really).

What the band still manages to do so well is use aural snippets from a range of contrasting but conventional sources, weave them together and still sound like no one else out there.

It starts off brilliantly, but by the end of twelve tracks, it tapers off into an incessant and increasingly underwhelming performance.

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

The brew of Anything In Return is strong enough that its overly sugary moments don’t ruin the experience of the album, and it’s certainly strong enough to merit many, many plays.

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.

Rapor is an absorbing and accomplished 80’s sheened synth-pop EP infused with heartache and imagination.

Mechanical Bull is the sound of Kings of Leon de-fanged, de-crowned, and de-throned, further evidence of their inexorable slide towards artistic irrelevance.

Almost nothing about it works.

The reality is that Something to Tell You, though strong in its own right, just doesn’t quite live up to the pomp and circumstance established by Days.

DJ Dahi, Sounwave and Cardo handle the bulk of beats here, with additional help from ScHoolboy staples Nez & Rio, plus the venerable Boi-1da and Jake One. Except the results are less DAMN. and more Redemption, the Jay Rock album from last year that everyone has already forgotten.

Migos have mastered their craft, but they spend too much time delivering what we expect instead of exploring their more interesting caprices.

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

Little Boots knows how to write a hook.

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

This Is… Icona Pop is not revolutionary, original, or inventive.... What This Is… Icona Pop, and Icona Pop as an artistic duo, possess that few others can lay claim to, is a firm grasp on the musical zeitgeist.

Flawless transitions are endemic to the record, and necessary in order to cram this many ideas into an attention-deficit 32 minutes.

Ryan Adams unearths new emotional riches, mostly sad ones, from his source material. And his 1989 transcends mere tribute.

Bundick’s inspirations run rampant across the back half of Michael.

It’s an enjoyable and diversionary, if not particularly nutritious, experience.

Offerings of pure pop pleasure are offset with healthy doses of weirdness. It’s a sincere, exciting and excitable album that successfully adds by subtracting.

Though it never quite comes through crystal-clear, the intensity and sincerity of the underlying emotion manages to bleed through a confusing swirl of altered sounds.

Mind Of Mine is a better whole than a collection of songs, and the standouts tend to be the shorter, less unambitious ditties (the theatrical “It’s You”; the gut-punch party jam “She”).

It is intensely personal, tangled in the sentiments that privately plague each of us. Untogether is meant for those cold, murky nights in which we feel completely and utterly alone.

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.

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.

Forcefield a passable, fun album.

Despite its outward bustle and injections of colour throughout, the album’s personality is also disappointingly tentative and placid.

This is the third Pains record in a row that has enough memorable songs to play almost like a career-spanning Best Of collection.

If allowed a spot in your rotation, its placidity could nudge you into taking the scenic routes a little more often. And that alone is worthy of some (appropriately muted) applause.

Overall, In Cold Blood is a pleasant listen in small doses, functioning better in manageable chunks than as a whole forty-minute work.

Beach Fossils have delivered an album of shimmering guitars and an ebulliently bouncy rhythm that is simply a beautiful listen.

Harry Styles is fun listening and will rightly soundtrack many a summer. But after demanding to be treated as a capital-A Artist, Harry Styles finds himself atop a pedestal without anything to say.

In The Wild won’t ruffle feathers, but it’s rarely less than enjoyable.

Everything musical seems startlingly familiar, and not in the paying-homage-to-the-denizens-of-rock-past way the album’s conceit might have you imagine.

Supreme Cuts know how to construct a track, but if it’s staying power they’re after, they’ll need to develop a more original sense of what their music is, what it can do, and the places it can go.

While Space Project ultimately feels more like a noble failure than an attempted Record Store Day cash-in, its general lack of wonderment adds little to the imaginative legacy of Carl Sagan and the Voyager Golden Record.

On Naomi, the Cave Singers don’t really fail at anything; however, save for a couple of moments, they don’t offer up anything all that memorable either.

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

Apocalypse Soon struggles to keeps things interesting over its modest seventeen minute run.

Julian has been leading us here since First Impressions of Earth, he has finally made his no-fi, bonkers masterpiece.

On Green Language, we witness risks. We listen anxiously as Rustie bets a Brinks truck on his emotional wherewithal, and that bet pays out exponentially.

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

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.

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.

Mastermind passes by as a single, indistinguishable blur. To the credit of Ross and his many co-producers, the experience is rarely leaden and often engaging.

Unfortunately, apart from the delicious pop dance tunes of “Spirit” and “Unhold,” Apar fails to make any real waves.

The elements are still there, but they aren’t fused in a way consistent with the hopes of those who foresaw The Strokes being the best rock band of our tim

While Time isn’t a massive overhaul, Bear in Heaven tweaked where they needed to, and picked up a pretty neat trick along the way. The more you listen to these songs, the more they linger.

The only issue is that some tracks are slightly overlong, and the trio of short interludes feel unnecessary--threatening to pull you out of the moment and stifle the gradually escalating sense of euphoria. This is a small complaint, however, given the consistently infectious hooks and melodies, and the manner in which it brilliantly and wistfully evokes rose-tinted memories of the lost Golden Age of dance.

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

The real embarrassment is that more than the work of his peers or his idols, mostly Pharrell’s just ripping off himself to seriously diminished returns.

As Tesfaye notes on “Reminder”, The Weeknd has inspired a lot of imitators. Instead of moving forward on Starboy, he ends up sounding like one of them.

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward continue to prove She & Him is more than mere novelty. Now we just need some richness and depth.

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 his fourth studio album I Decided, he positions himself as hip-hop’s poster-boy for all of these qualities [hard work, sacrifice, persistence, gratitude], but in rapping about such unassailable ideas, he comes away with uninteresting results.

In striving for consistency, he sacrifices discretion and intention.

Joanne still represents a striking course correction for Lady Gaga. By abandoning the dance club for the dive bar, she may have tossed aside her status as a pop star once and for all. But Gaga has emerged as something better and truer.

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.

Where Fade Away really falls flat is how it lethargically, circularly insists upon the hopelessness of Consentino’s problems without elaboration. Instead, it fumbles for anecdotes that undersell what should be highly relatable emotions.

She needs great material and she needs star power. But this album doesn’t have great songs, and the only thing that’s changed shape more than an R&B hit in recent years is the definition of star power.

Darlings is very listenable and mostly fun--just don’t overthink it and keep the BSS comparisons to a minimum.

On Dynamics, Frankel and Millhiser made an unnatural-yet-understandable misstep, but on Crime Cutz, they’re hoping to regain their footing and play off their awkward slip by reverting back to what worked for them in the first place. It’s fun hearing it work for them again.

This LP is as sterilized and recycled as the pop gunk that the band profess to loathe.

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.

Whether we like her or not, Sia might be authoring the most iconic pop music of our generation. For this reason alone, This is Acting is worth at least one listen.

While the rest of Outside may not deliver in such a manner [as “A Forest at Night”], it still showcases one of North America’s more unique and talented producers on his own terms.

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

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

Taiga is better-produced and differently arranged than 2010’s “Poor Animal,” but it’s no more or less “pop.”

But for the most part, Magpie provides us with another bundle of easygoing tunes from a band that seems to have a limitless supply.

Though the revamps are distractingly overwrought (this project could have been called The 20/20 Xperience), Jackson’s voice, pure and fierce as ever, cuts straight through Timbaland and company’s more-is-more fireworks display.

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.

The main downfall of Z is a lack of strong lyricism. In the rare moments that the murk clears or the light becomes too bright, what lies behind is less graceful than what it seemed.

They didn’t just retain relevance; they released the best album of their entire career.

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.

Muppets In Space album cover aside, Gonzalez has still left plenty on Junk for his merry usual band of misfits--the lovers, the dreamers, and him.

[Angel Haze is] disappointing, misguided, flaccid.

The songs on Please Be Honest are in keeping with the constant state of evolution and experimentation of most GBV albums. Which is to say, the songs are hit or miss.

Have Fun With God has greatest potential as nap music on long bus rides, but is otherwise only listenable in the context of its source material.

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.

It’s all bolder, fuller, and, well, better.

An unexpectedly weird, inventive and invigorating album that sounds absolutely nothing like The Strokes, and for that reason alone you should be really excited, and maybe even a little hopeful, to give this record a spin.

Sophomore album Always Strive and Prosper had ASAP Ferg striving to expand his lyrical and sonic palette and prospering less than half of the time. Still Striving then, perhaps self-consciously titled, course-corrects by dropping pretense and delivering what we came to Ferg for in the first place: banging beats, fire flows. Some of the time, anyway. 11 out of 14 of these tracks have guest features, and a high percentage of them don’t leave much impression.

A game-changer Bigfoot is not, but it’s a very solid debut album full of eight consistently catchy, easygoing tunes ready-made for summer beach trips, pool parties, and barbecues.

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.

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.

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

Sonically, his oeuvre has bridged the divide between barren and lush. Lyrically, he has perfected the motif of narcotized horror.... This is the real deal.

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

Instead of utilizing the talented crew’s many particular strengths to create a unique and unified sound, The Fool comes out feeling like nobody in particular and everyone at once.

So, bottom line, you’ve got a few pieces of trash, a couple of sketches whose mileage varies on how well you dig their hooks, and plenty of fantastic stuff that ranks with M.I.A.’s best work, and M.I.A.’s best work is fascinating and damned fun.

Because The Internet is just a giant non-sequitur, a pop culture gag reel that relies a little too heavily on flippancy to ring true.