The music itself isn't really the issue. It's the conceit, the fact that even though Kanye and Jay-Z truthfully are nailing what pop can sound like, they use their royal stature not to communicate fresh ideas but pander to their subjects because they f*cking can.

What truly puts Swift’s fifth full-length in its own class is the combination of brilliant songwriting and incredible production. Those two strengths come together throughout 1989, but no track showcases it better than “Out of the Woods.”

They’ve crafted a record that feels more like imitation than originality.

Weapon is the sound of a band that still has something to say, but delivered with a comfort level commensurate with their thirty years of existence.

There isn’t enough content in Mudboy to make it much other than a vibe. There are traces of A$AP Ferg, Waka Flocka Flame, and OG Maco locked beneath its consistently muddy sound. But there isn’t enough nuance or ‘moments’ to make it worth repeated listens (like Sheck’s mentor, Travis Scott).

There’s greatness all over this thing, and the way in which Boris stop just short of seeing the whole thing off in style can’t help but scan as unnecessary and frustrating. Did Heavy Rocks (2022) need to be a triumph for rambunctious heavy rocking glory at the minor but palpable expense of quality control? Bah. Shou ga nai; Boris is Boris.

On the whole, The Odd Couple has a much more unified atmosphere, but in quality the album is sporadic and unpredictable.

Ultimately, though, the bulk of Holy Fire is another sterling addition to Foals’ repertoire, and the band knows it too.

The band are in fine form even as they step out of the spotlight, with synthesisers, organs, baritone guitar and other textural touches constantly hovering in the periphery. With no crunchy guitars to fill up the mix, O'Malley's basswork is the best it's ever been, anchoring all this sci-fi nonsense to something both earthly and indisputably funky. Discerning in all this where the space-age future rockstar ends and Alex Turner begins is a head-spinning task, fiction and real intertwined along knotty mobius strips of melodies which resolutely avoid radio hooks.

In the end, Don’t Get Lost is very enjoyable, yet the main downside is its length.

Blindness doesn’t necessarily come together in the way a record ideally would, despite the fact that the songs are largely high-quality. Nonetheless, I’m quite intrigued by the record’s final stretch, which notably improves the overall feeling of this release.

Luckily, there’s enough good on this album to hide the negatives.

Easy Tiger is at least Adams' best release since Love is Hell and it may even be the long awaited successor to Heartbreaker.

Material Control doesn't cater to anything except the next rush of adrenaline, the next high. ... This is a Glassjaw album, through and through.

I can easily see it lacking the longevity of their other albums, but for now it’s damn good to see the Weavers doing what they do best...screaming about natural nonsense and making some excellent black metal.

Hearing a voice that grows scratchy and threatens to break and has not been tampered with, has not been slicked over in a studio, a voice that reveals all that can be found within a person and also seems to hold something back, to suggest another truth just behind the veil.

She & Him's debut release is more like a collection of songs rather than a cohesive, fresh album, and as such, is a letdown for a singer that showed a lot of promise.

Shepherd Head is undoubtedly a solid release, especially considering the u-turns which make it, clearly, a different kind of Young Jesus record. While I’m not sure that the album’s scattershot nature will endear it to a broader audience, its tenuous genre affiliations leave a potentially wide range of listeners in the crosshairs.

It’s a nostalgic release full of wisdom, like hearing from an old friend, providing the kind of evening fireside soundtrack which hits just right in a particular mood. If nothing else, it’s a marvel how much emotion Knopfler, getting on in years, can still eke out of those guitar strings.

It successfully adds another wrinkle to her sound with the addition of sweeping string sections, majestic brass horns, and epic flourishes. It also can’t be overstated just how brilliant this album’s pinnacles are, with ‘Becoming All Alone Again’, ‘Up the Mountain’, and ‘Spacetime Fairytale’ standing out as particularly dazzling career highlights.

This latest effort is an unabashed classic hip hop record for you to either take it or leave it. The only disappointment is that it could have easily been more than this.

Apart from a precious few exceptions, none of the gathered musicians seem able nor willing to push each other into new musical territory that could yield fresh revelations about their union.

I Was Here For a Moment, Then I Was Gone is simply an excellent post-rock record, with all the fat and filler cut out, leaving only room for pure, brilliant songwriting.

Big Ups combine the elements in such a way that compliments their signature style without ever compromising their identity; Before a Million Universes will almost certainly be one of the most interesting punk releases of 2016 because of that.

Overinflated and squealing: it is not more than the sum of its parts. One hundred thousand good ideas, it turns out, are not enough to make an album.

The band (and mix) sounds healthy and reinvigorated, the tracklist covers a fair range of sounds, and at the end of the day, it's still every inch a Baroness album.

Blood Pressures is the band's most coherent, consistent work to date, an album painted in gritty black-and-white blues and Mosshart's sexy, venomous vocals.

While the album as a whole is far from being perfect, moments of it are some of the most gorgeous and interesting things I have heard.

The Weakerthans are still writing pretty, tender music, but they seem to have lost their immediacy and potency.

Elsie is nostalgic, contemplative, and persistent; it's also one of 2011's best.

All in all, Fate and Alcohol makes for a solid final act for a band which beat the actuarial tables by a wide margin.

There's enough fun, intelligent rock n roll to give anyone their Hold Steady fix but in context of their discography, and with a little bit of prodding, this is something grander.

III is a masterpiece of modern indie folk. Bad Books have in every way lived up to the potential of a so-called “supergroup”, combining the best aspects of Andy Hull’s and Kevin Devine’s artistry, with help in no small part from Robert McDowell’s atmospheric guitar wizardry. The songs themselves are rich, lush, and flourishing – yet totally simplistic.

It’s the end of the world every single day, and King Gizzard have just offered you its soundtrack.

Ceremonials is truly one of the few recent pop LPs that works both as a collection of individual songs and as a true album, with the right balance and flow to keep the record captivating from start to finish.

All of the material here is passable, with a few highlights that will surely leave a positive impression on listeners.

In spite of my own misgivings towards Leaving Meaning., it is an admirable effort that doesn't tell us much about what the future has in store, but to make people aware that Swans aren't quite dead...yet.

Yellowcard may still stand as one of their most impressive feats yet. Serving as their most captivating and emotive release since Ocean Avenue.

Brand New found a way to create a complete, effervescent album.

This unconventional marriage winds up being one that's most conventional, with the traffic of conversation decidedly one way.

Meandering, extremely derivative 2000's metal.

Hammer of the Witches is the post-Midian release fans have been asking for while retaining the riff-oriented sound the band have been attempting for the past 15 years--only this time they’ve actually pulled it all off.

Girl With Basket of Fruit is the only record Xiu Xiu could've possibly made after what was the impossibly positive, yet unsure-sounding Forget back in 2017. The music contained on the album is hyper-aggressive, manic, even unpredictable at times, but that's the magic of what Jamie Stewart is doing, for better or worse.

Black Cascade should be taken for what it is: fodder for the band's increasingly heralded live show and, at its simplest, a strong output in an increasingly stagnant, attention craved US black metal scene.

Musically, this is a very good record, one that might have been worth as much as a 4.5 with a different vocalist.

Make a point of hearing one of the angriest, most intelligent, and subtly hopeful albums of 2012.

There’s absolutely no way Queensryche’s self-titled album will disappoint long-time fans that have been clamoring for a return to what initially made the band special.

There's No Leaving Now was almost as good as The Wild Hunt--and now I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream. is almost as good as There's No Leaving Now. It’s diminishing returns on the same approach, and with this album we’ll definitely find ourselves satisfied yet again--only with another layer of appreciation eroded.

The standout tracks are strong enough to carry the album, which means that it will probably resonate with listeners who don’t mind putting up with lengthy passages of fluff in between those moments of grandeur.

Smile does have it's special moments, but the problem is that they never amount to anything better than the star parts on their previous efforts.

Listening to Centipede is like going through a garage filled with clutter.

If Turner can return to his best--and there's reason to suspect he can't--then the possibilities open to them are potentially limitless. Then, Humbug will be seen a stepping stone. That's certainly how it feels now.

Ultimately, Promise Everything is a solid collection of songs written by a band that, over the course of 3 albums, have shown that they rarely write a bad song. However, the majority of the songs feel a little too secure within their own skin; a little too tentative to deviate from the safety of their rough midtempo origins.

The inherent problems which bog Welcome Home down largely stem from superficial writing. This is nothing new for the band, but for a record centring itself around Vinnie, the lyrics feel like they’re skirting around the topic in a humdrum manner in favour of really getting into the nitty-gritty of it all.

If there's one thing that defines Midnight Boom, it's the new sense of fun that The Kills seem to have discovered.

A triumph on many levels and a failure on only a few small fronts, ExitingARM is a more than worthy addition to Themselve’s vast array of musical treasures, and a sign that perhaps in the future we’ll see a truly universal album come from anticon.’s most brilliant duo.

These songs aren’t necessarily greater than the pop tunes around them, but they are different, more singular and more interesting.

It's as colorful as it sounds, and it makes for an album where one can never quite know what to expect next.

It’s this unholy amalgam of anger and swagger and self-loathing and--above all--love, all served over some of the best production work the man has ever done.

With the influx of diverse instrumentation and delightfully wacky songwriting/production choices, Paradise State of Mind may actually be their most accomplished album to-date – either way, it’s definitely their most entertaining.

Cupid Deluxe is by no means an imperfect record, but it is still a powerful reminder of how grossly underrated Dev Hynes is as an artist in his own right.

this is a Mono album through and through, so much in fact that this reviewer felt déja-vu during some of the more lulling parts. Depending on one's feelings towards the band, this will be a key factor in whether or not this is a worthwhile listen.

It wouldn’t be a Pineapple Thief record if we weren’t served some moody tracks. There are less than usual (no complaints about that) and often spiced with louder sections throughout.

At the end of the day, the title Write About Love turned out to be just as bland as the music it pertained to.

Injury Reserve is as cohesive a hip-hop album as one can hope. This is thanks, in large part, to Parker’s ever-so-versatile production, though also, I think, Groggs’ and, in particular, Ritchie’s growing scepticism with modern hip-hop culture, and a heightened awareness of its pretensions.

Hello Exile is full of idealized versions of Menzingers songs, a little slower than usual but still containing all the sonic and lyrical hallmarks that we’ve come to expect.

Gravity Stairs is the ideal vision of a band of pop's elder statesmen aging gracefully. There's no shameless chart-chasing or transparent attempts to capture the sound of yesterday here, which we can ascribe to the remarkable fact that something about the Finns' music simply sounds timeless, no matter which sound they're exploring or name they're releasing it under.

Sucker, for all its charms, occasionally comes off as one-dimensional. But there were few records this year as sparkly and blindingly colorful, with production values that revel in excess and a mischievous spirit that rivals the best of Charli’s rebellious, sexually adventurous forebears.

The easiest and most likely path to continued success for Welch and company would have been to attempt to re-create the spellbinding magic of Ceremonials or the anthemic qualities of Lungs. High as Hope is neither, and that makes it hands down the most forward-thinking album of Florence and the Machine’s care

Without hyperbole, it is one of the most fun, vibrant, rewarding, intelligently structured pop records to shimmy through these parts in quite some time, taking cues from whichever electro-punk-pop-DIY-indie-sludge-rock hybrid 21-year-old Londoner Mica Levi fell in love with when she was 14.

Expo 86 proves that Krug and Boeckner still can do what's always been most important, namely writing songs that still kick *** at every available opportunity.

Insides is a thrilling, addictive, at times breathtaking piece of electronica and is sure to make Hopkins into a name more renown than just ‘Coldplay’s co-producer’, but here’s hoping that with his next effort he can focus a little more on stirring the heart and a little less on shocking the head.

Resonate with them, and you learn to speak about yourself in a way that carries meaning--and this is what What Now does best. Take a walk with this in your headphones and look at the people passing by; you’re allowed some isolation among others.

Even if it’s not quite as good as Shinedown’s very best material dating back to their heyday, Attention can still claim at least one superlative in relation to the band’s discography. For starters, it may very well be their heaviest album, moving along at a consistent breakneck pace that relents only sparingly.

Corey Taylor has crafted a no-frills, carefree collection of party rock tunes that, at worst, offer nothing inventive or deep but at best will give you an adrenaline rush at 2 a.m. when you’re out with your buddies getting trashed and forgetting that 2020 ever happened.

There’s a warmth and resonance to every last beat here, and so the album, while frequently propulsive, is far too lush to be harsh or impersonal. When it goes it doesn’t shut you out, it sweeps you along.

Spectral Lines is a batch of quietly luminous tracks that feel just as interlocked as the secrets of the universe, sharing pianos that blossom to stunning effect, vocal harmonization that whisks your mind off toward the ether, guitars with just enough bite to lend traction, and seamless transitions that give the entire experience an effortless, elegant flow.

The flickers of brilliance are scattered all throughout Man’s Best Friend, and for the most part, it’s a great album with some moments of weakness. It’s a clear step ahead of Short and Sweet, and hopefully, will be another stepping stone on the path to her magnum opus.

he more he opens up, however indirectly, the more Dark Bird Is Home is content to color his emotions through an opaque prism of expansive arrangements that belie a broken heart.

Essentially, Infinity On High is From Under The Cork Tree, except this time done well.

Their most socially aware record yet. Whether they address political issues, genocides (both historic and contemporary) or anxieties caused by alienation or inability to cope with the overwhelming pace of the 21st century, the band smoothly blends the beautiful with the ugly. In between the loud, razor wired guitar attack you also get lovely picked chords or bouncy bass lines.

Sometimes wistful and reflective, other times earnest, Temper is always tranquil, concise, and accessible.

The band sounds fresh from their rest, aren't trying to be something they're not again, and most importantly, they sound young and sincere. Welcome back, Yellowcard.

A lot of tracks start off OK, but his flow and style are so unfocused and muddled the songs become a chore to sit through.

In the end, what we have is a record that pushes towards an extremely promising new direction while still managing to maintain the band's adored personality.

Wreck, their seventh full-length effort, is pretty much everything you would come to expect from an Unsane record.

At times The Physical World feels like the real deal, at others a pale imitation of a too-distinct aesthetic.

OK Human is an oddity and a warm digital hug; it's Weezer reacting to an endless, nerve-shredding, social-life-destroying period of isolation the way only Weezer can, drawing further inwards to themselves but somehow inviting us along for the ride.

If Async was an album centered on the genesis of its creator's suffering and recovery, Remodels is the triumph over the odds put up against Sakamoto and his way of continuing to share his life's work with the world through the lens of his disciples and his contemporaries.

Kanye West’s fourth album 808s and Heartbreak follows the crowd rather than leads it. Where he steps, the footprints of T-Pain are readily visible. His use of auto-tune throughout the album is heavy, and in songs like Heartless and Love Lockdown its use is appealing.