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.

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.

The most optimistic light to view Only Run in is also the most condemning; it’s not so much a fully realized album as it is a promising blueprint for songs that haven’t yet been written.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For an album that embraces the theme of technology, Beta Love sounds stuck in the past, belonging to an era in which the novelty of overusing the synthesizer has not yet worn off.

[Angel Haze is] disappointing, misguided, flaccid.

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

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.

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.

Lurching drum-machine beats, gentle piano chords, and somber string arrangements form the musical groundwork upon which Albarn sighs about the encroaching dominance of technology. If you’re the kind of person who shares this worldview, you may find Everyday Robots an often lovely demonstration of post-millennium tension. If not, the album’s monotony can fast become punishing.

An impenetrable, overwrought, hit-and-miss product marred by ego.

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.

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

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

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.

Heard consecutively, these songs sound disappointingly like one another, and while one good belter about the pain of unrequited love is a blessing, nine in a row turns out to be real drag.

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.

Smith plays it safe, joining the growing crop of British talent with big voices and little personalities. At least he sounds pleasant though.

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.