The record is weighty, but with a defter, more nimble touch than on prior efforts.

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.

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.

Little Fictions is another solid entry in the Elbow catalog.

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.

Even though it doesn’t do nearly enough to distinguish itself from the band’s earlier albums, it’s an enjoyable enough listen that it’s not too hard to excuse its flaws.

Yours, Dreamily will be perfect comfort food for rock and roll purists.

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.

Matsson makes solid use of a band this time too, to flesh out the bare-bones folk-pop for which he has previously been renowned.

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

She may be uncertain of her talents, but she’s not uncertain of who she is, and in the case of Fin, that’s just enough.

To fully enjoy Bonito Graduation, view it through its own inquisitive outlook, and to not be daunted by the fact some of it won’t be understandable to you.

Self-aware in all of the right ways and delightfully crass in all of the wrong ones, Mr. Wonderful is ultimately a bit of a lark, but it is also far more enjoyable, far more self-aware, and far wittier than it needed to be.

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.

Rainbow may not contain the electrobops you expect from Kesha Sebert, but at its heart, it does possess what drew everyone to her in the first place: confidence, sonic booms, and an assurance that everything will be alright when the storm clears.

In addition to nostalgia, they also use the easy weapons of doing that juxtaposition thing of pairing cheery music with sad lyrics and vocals and putting the other single (a nice climbing keyboard line in that one) wisely as what would be the opener of the second side if this were the vinyl age; spacing out the good stuff instead of front-loading the record. The other songs aren’t bad, but their pleasures are pleasant at best.

Love Streams is far from Hecker’s best release. But it’s a promising development in his career, in that it proves not only that Hecker hasn’t run out of ideas but that he’s still bursting with them.

While Goodness doesn’t match the raw feeling or sincerity of Home, Like Noplace Is There, it’s well worth the time of any self-respecting emo junkie.

Like John Hughes crossed with David Lynch crossed with John Waters. Pom Pom recalls similar vibes in bursts, and at its best conjures even more striking colors and passages.

Every song has key x-factors that transform already solid works into longer-lasting excitement.

Try Me is an album that does things completely on its own rather difficult terms and succeeds on those terms.

Birkenes’ vox often skews towards the incorporeal, a little too airy for its own good, and requires some form of substance to keep it tethered to the music. Without it, Pocketknife threatens to float away into some ethereal realm (as it tends to do in the latter half). That being said, Birkenes does craft some gems throughout the record.

The about-faces make for an engaging, challenging listen, but by the end it all seems a bit vague.

It is an album far less fun than her previous ones, but that’s the point: Allen’s a bit tired of fun, and isn’t afraid to admit that “fun” can sometimes be the source of your troubles.

Ultimately, since it took them 7 years to follow-up their last album, both of the Let’s Try the After EPs function, at the very least, as a stop-gap until their next one.

For the most part, Space holds it together, but there are a few moments that feel a little... moronic.

While there are elements within that suggest a compelling cocktail of high-drama and low self-awareness, Everything You’ve Come to Expect is more dour than it needs to, or should, be.

The moments when his music really comes alive with joy are the best on Teenage Emotions, and they’re often the less rap-oriented moments.