The beats are good. The hooks are memorable, if often corny.... [But] Gone is the sense of humor, fearlessness, and willingness to subvert clichés that he flexed on his generally impressive mixtapes.

Dynamics or structure are not a major concern; these songs sound happy to just get the ignition working.

If you are over 25 and have been in a romantic relationship, Damage will not confront you with the unfamiliar, or make you suddenly realize you've never understood yourself like you do now. Still, some of it will comfort you when you've been depressed or confused by your life.

It's initially unnerving to witness indie's most celebrated airy faeries butch it up, but the result ultimately satisfies their what-the-hell-do-we-do-next dilemma better than any record since Ágætis byrjun.

Cole should be fired up to make his own Illmatic, his own Reasonable Doubt, or his own College Dropout. But here he seems stuck somewhere between starstruck and envious, fawning over his idols instead of trying to take their crowns.

Talk a Good Game is her realness in full flower, an album that balances world-weariness about relationships with infectious dollops of sexual agency, tackling the vagaries of love almost exclusively and offering anthems for experiences that every woman has had (or will have) at some point.

Aside from its sheer heft, though, it's hard to imagine it converting anyone who doesn't already care.

Just about every song here has a couplet Elvis Costello would be proud to call his own, and the money shot "Elephant" has several.

Yeezus ranks as more than a glorified placeholder in West's catalogue, but one can't help feeling that parenthood will compel his muse to even more Olympian levels of bombast and grandiosity.

One possible surprise is how little of Super Collider actually thrashes.

Desire Lines sits with remarkable ease next to Camera Obscura albums released a decade ago.

It is a bit Sabbath-by-numbers, but given the weight of history (it's their first studio album together in 35 years), you can see why they would kind of back into the thing.

We are offered 20 more, a handful of these tracks bordering on genius, a few offering genuine yuks, and the rest sounding so half-baked they could be an ice-cream flavor.

Between Pitts' unrelieved misery and the tepid music, Pythons makes a bitter, unsatisfying brew. Imbibe at your own risk.

If you want a "black metal album" that serves dually as make-out music and a loneliness weapon, this is as emo and earnest as it gets.

With Tomorrow's Harvest, the Sandisons' return feels natural. Rather than resort to hiring disco session musicians or citing Judith Butler to add a new kink to their sound, they've done something even rarer in the modern era: They’ve aged with grace.

His new mixtape's best moments gain their power from such good-idea/bad-idea indulgences and batty risk-taking.

The album's first half is suffused with a longing that flits between hopeful and resigned, unsure which is the worse fate. At other times, she sounds a little exasperated--mournful even--but throughout, her elegant arrangements remain taut and full of energy.

Nothing sounds new, and yet it has no parallel in the old Alice catalog, because they were just so much weirder than we remember.

Poised, cool, and impermeable, Trouble Will Find Me apotheosizes urban romance and its discontents, where conversations are monologues, parties are confessionals, and education and analysis are interchangeable.

Friedberger has always been a storyteller, but these tracks are rife with the kinds of details that breathe life into fiction, like white socks on a girl roller-skating down Market Street ("When I Knew"), and characters with names like Reggie and Peter ("I'll Never Be Happy Again").

It should be noted that this all sounds fantastic.

Despite gestating for years, IV Play is an album that feels unattended to.

Fortunately, Settle doesn't settle; each new track finds them testing their own formulas.

While their newfound alt-rock dalliances tend to blur together in the middle for some urgent-sounding tracks marked by temper-tantrum vocals ("What goes around, comes back around," promises "We're Taking This"), they finish strong, never quite denying their metal instincts

It's a warm, lightly psychedelic sound reminiscent of British strum god Bert Jansch and the quieter moments on Led Zeppelin III, less a soundtrack for Sunday brunch and more a place to get lost in, though our host herself isn't interested in hiding.

Nightmare Ending may not be Cooper's most cohesive record, but it's a perfect representation of the indie-rock generation's most diverse ambient musician.

On Excuse My French, he's outshone and undervalued.