Queen’s greatest asset is Nicki’s dual propensity for virtuosic verses and catchy pop elements. She skillfully blends them on the album’s best tracks.

For as indecisive of an album as Tired of Tomorrow seems to be from a conceptual standpoint, the overall musical quality and talent level never wavers.

This album is exactly what you’d expect from Fruit Bats. It’s fairly slim in runtime, very chill, and could conceivably be described as anything from indie pop to country rock without a listener batting an eye. There are songs notably catchy (“Rushin’ River Valley”), affecting (“We Used To Live Here”), and both of those previous descriptors at the same time (the goofily-titled “Jesus Tap Dancing Christ (It’s Good To Be Home)”)

Anti-Icon is a concise offering with plenty to offer both fans of Ghostemane and the industrial genre.

Ctrl is a Facebook-photo album of opinions and behaviours that probably shouldn’t be broadcasted online. It’s also an assembly of tracks that prevail as mantras of self-affirmation, and it balances the two sides of its character with an awareness that feels like an accident, though it's welcomed all the same. But even if we disregard what it all means, these tracks are still jams, tunes, or any other blasé term people attach to music that you can throw away your dignity to.

The result is far from flawless, but Clues sparkles in the rough.

It makes for a surprisingly fun and varied record. Yet, that's not to say that the record is without its foibles. The biggest problem is Die Knowing never comes into its own.

Most of the album is still enjoyable, however, and certainly provides some new ideas for instrumental rock music.

His conception of melody and harmony is well above the average hip-hop artist, but the album as a whole is very flat and boring.

Be it progression or passion for art, it is the key unifying force behind TV On The Radio, and it's not here.

Jama Ko is, for twelve of its thirteen songs, political in the best way, using a deeply focused aesthetic both to engage with and as a momentary escape from the social environment which produced it.

Conquering does nothing genuinely new, and that’s genuinely okay. The basics are the basics for a reason and, as Employed to Serve demonstrate, executing them with passion and precision is sometimes all that you need.

Nas sounds as energized as ever in his current era and he’s dealing some serious bars across the 15 tracks composing Magic 3. At the same time, it sounds as if the Hit-Boy partnership is finally losing steam--something evident in a record that is stretched thin (cough 15 tracks) and inconsistent, capable of reaching commendable heights and consequently worrying depths.

Good for You isn’t a pleasant listen because Amine is so gosh darn happy, it’s because it appears so out of step with a relentlessly negative and dour mood. We could all do with just that much more happiness in our lives.

This is music that plays well in every venue, from the late night hangouts of urban bohemia to the awkward houses of the indie disco.

Átta has enough going for it to warrant an inspection from the rest of us, but it's both fairer and far more flattering to view it as the conclusion to a troubled chapter in the band's history than the enthusiastic heir to any hefty expectations you might otherwise burden it with.

Czarface Meets Ghostface won't shake up any lives, and if we're being perfectly honest not too many of us will be spinning it when the year is out. That's alright, though--it's not designed as some timeless classic statement. Sounding free from the burden of expectation from their storied careers, for the first time in a long time, this is the sound of legends cutting loose a little bit.

13 is primarily a journey into familiar territory, one that yet again focuses on Black Sabbath's acumen for vintage heavy metal.

There are a lot of great ideas, but those ideas don’t necessarily translate into greatness, largely because the album feels a bit drowned in its own creative progression. .... I can say, however, that tThere are a lot of individual moments on Radical Optimism that are lovely to listen to, and—despite my qualms—it’s definitely worth a spin.

An opus that reaffirms Tinashe's place within the pantheon of modern R&B, yet one that also proves that she needs to slightly refine her formula to craft that defining record she's been hinting at here whole career.

An infallibly-down-the-line no-nonsense rather-quite-good-but-not-at-all-groundbreaking psych-rock record.

They have managed to produce their most easily accessible album while still clearly sounding like Fear Factory.

Despite the lack of any real surprises, Awakening easily stands with anything else Sacred Reich has ever done and shouldn’t disappoint any longtime fans that are still out there. For those that were too young to experience Sacred Reich back when they were originally active, just be prepared for some early nineties-style metal with a few songs that move back in time to a point when no-frills thrash ruled the metal landscape.

Re-Mit, while able to hold its own in some quarters, is not the best of The Fall by any stretch. However, some of the strange humour and twisted narratives, sorely lacking from their last release Ersatz G.B., are back.

Return of the Dream Canteen is better overall than the previous effort. It might have a couple of higher sonic peaks, but suffers from similar flaws. Obviously, one hour-long album with the strongest tracks recorded in the past couple of years would have been enough for a stronger comeback.

Flowers of Evil should represent an erasure of the false dichotomy of high art and base pleasures, but it feels like a middle ground strewn with the negative qualities of both, and will likely leave its audience in that chocolate-on-face state of feeling oversatiated and a little cheap.

Some tracks make notable improvements – a subtle lift on "This Love"'s gorgeous arrangement boosts one of Swift's most forgettable ballads to a late tracklist highlight, while the new version of "Clean" emphasises producer Imogen Heap's vocal offerings so resplendently that it's a crime she doesn't receive a feature credit – yet others are misplaced in their adjustments.

This is her best album yet, and great moments abound amidst the fat.

For all its technical skill, though, this focus inward makes for a circular listening experience, at least for long time listeners of the band. It’s difficult to feel like this is ground that hasn’t been traversed before, and just as well.

While Addison isn’t the essential listen that it clearly wants to be, it’s an intriguing start to a career that just might one day get there.

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.

It’s a competent album, fun and succinct enough for a worthwhile playthrough but too full of yesterday’s novelty to shrug off the why here? why now? concerns destined to orbit any comeback record. Individual listeners will find their own ways to make peace with this, but I struggle to view it as more than a back-to-basics top-up from an act that had very little to prove. Blessed and cursed with a handful of the most talented names in rock, it’s equal parts a welcome return and a missed opportunity.

Fuse lands as a welcome sampler of the Everything But the Girl sound updated to the ‘20s, but not quite the powerhouse comeback they are so clearly capable of.

Pacific Daydream is pretty much just fine--34 minutes of unambiguous, catchy music, competent enough to land on the good side of Weezer's discography without reaching for anything more.

Ultimately, Conduit is a fair step down from the resurgence that was Welcome Home Armageddon. But having said that, it remains a solid addition to their discography.

Dedicated is good, but it doesn’t whirl with the same destructive force; in that sense, it is Carly Rae’s first genuine failure in a decade.

Wrong Creatures is an often somber listen, better done at night. It isn’t Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at their peak, although it shows the three seasoned musicians doing a good job in their own field.

There’s some reassurance in that many of the more aimless songs sound like they would translate far better to the band’s true home on the stage, but here they qualify more as two-dimensional portraits.

This album does not suck. It is disappointing, it is underwhelming, and it features some of the best pop cuts of the year. Yeule’s first hyper-playlistable album, I guess.

The album is far from perfect, but it is still temping to describe it as a welcome return to form for a songwriter who has lately ventured closer to fluffy indie-pop than the biting folk that made his name. The best of the songs on No Man’s Land mix dense historiography with accessible catchiness.

The Art of Survival picks up where The Kingdom left off, but it doubles down on the sludgy, heavier, direction of its predecessor while dumping most the alt rock influences. What’s more, in this era where heavy music is the norm, Bush almost sounds fresh because there’s very few artists blending grungy heaviness with a more accessible songwriting formula.

About two-thirds of Moral Hygiene is good and there are no tragic moments at all. In essence, the LP brings together most of what Ministry explored during the last three decades. The results are not stellar, but Jourgensen found a balance again between getting his point across and focusing on diversifying the music.

All told, 333’s latter two-thirds are full of similar highlights, individually enjoyable but somewhat piecemeal as a collection. It’s full of threads that almost come together and, more importantly, a generous swathe of playlist fodder, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of having three semi-distinct aftertastes in my mouth at the same time. Tinashe’s voice is impressive throughout, even if some songs don’t allow for the most engaging performances.

The group tried something different here and it really works. Overall, ROCKMAKER stands as one of the group’s most cohesive LPs in a long time, automatically making it easier to follow through and digest.

The record’s energy is impressive; the craft, even more so. What it doesn’t have, though, is any sense of vision, nothing of that dangerous excess or discovery that the best Cut Copy provides in spades. Instead, Haiku From Zero ends up being a bunch of great songs and little else.

Although the new album is a solid affair and a step up in tightness/structure, it needed that previous edge to be truly compelling.

It’s a loud and brash album, but too often, that’s all it is.

Legrand weaves a series of intersecting narratives of love and loneliness, intimacy and abandonment, maturity and nostalgia. Any one of these themes is rich enough to fuel far more than Once Twice Melody’s eighty-five minutes, but Beach House’s storytelling is defocused to the point of indistinction, strung out of moody vignettes that flow like asphalt and stick like the tide. ... Fortunately for us all, this is just too gorgeous a record to pose a true slog.

The instrumentation at hand is stellarly crafted, the riffs are infectious and most of the album as a whole is certainly on par with the band’s discography. Yet Intronaut’s most blatant change--foregoing harsh vocals, and only utilizing singing--is a decision that severely dampens the group’s fourth studio outing.

The listening experience is defined by languorous stretches between big moments, and becomes more of an exercise in patience than an engaging and enlivening journey. If it were more cohesive, more palpably moving in a musical sense, had less fat to trim, I could see myself fawning over Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers in fanboyish frenzy. As it stands, I think that in another five years I'll be wading back through this flawed masterpiece.

While Half Of Where You Live is structured remarkably well, its definitive moments lack that particular magnetism that’s always been at the heart of Gold Panda’s music.

Endless Rooms has the feel of a transition album, with the group throwing some new ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. There’s several new sounds and influences present on Endless Rooms which present intriguing and viable routes for RBCF to pursue on their eventual fourth record. The future is uncertain, but hope springs eternal.

On an album this long, there is equal room for good and bad, and you’re always equidistant from either one no matter what track you’ve reached.

It’s still a strong album with several standout moments, but these great moments are often hampered by the inchoate themes and parched ideas surrounding it, making the album feel at times unfinished.

The result is a sometimes great, sometimes merely serviceable album which can stand among Death Grips’ ample discography, despite occasionally sacrificing melody for amplified pandemonium.

The best Falling in Reverse songs, with rare exception, are the ones where Ronnie sounds like he's struggling to keep up with the song's pace.... The weakest songs on the album are, again, easily written-off as the band falling into familiar traps.

Who Will Look After the Dogs? is a long way from a perfect record, but this is no obstacle to respecting it on its own terms — as a sadsack burnout trip from a band that has lost sight of almost all its past brilliance and knows it, but still has enough dignity to own its scrappy qualities for what they are, rather than inadvertently collapsing into them (The Unraveling of PUPTheBand) and/or self-consciously hawking them (per The Unravelling of PUPThegoddamnedBAND).

As a writer of the English language, Kozelek gets perfect marks; as a writer of songs, the jury is still out.

At the end of the day, Purge is Godflesh doing Godflesh and doing a good job at it, but as far as how it stacks up against the rest of their discography, it’s far from a high point.

So why does every record feel like a Year Zero? It’s because each release comes with a caveat; that being “could do better”.

Despite being the shortest record in Natasha’s discography, it is also the most angular. Diversity is secondary to her vision and concept this time. It worked for the most part, yet as a whole, The Dream of Delphi could have easily been a more comprehensive affair.

At the end of the day, how one perceives Holy Moly! depends on whether they’re a glass half-empty or half-full type of person. On one hand, sound-wise, this feels like a step towards the right direction. On the other hand, Blues Pills are kinda like the 2005-06 LA Lakers; replace Kobe with Stephen Jackson, or another decent shooting guard, and what you have is a 20-win team instead of a playoff seed. Similarly, replace Elin with another decent vocalist, and chances are that we wouldn’t be talking about Holy Moly! right now.

Junk functions best as Gonzalez curating the soundtrack of his past, as on an individual basis these songs are usually quite enjoyable, well-crafted and dripping with affection for an era most people would prefer to forget.

The better they’ve gotten at refining their craft, at writing the perfect chorus and combining them seamlessly with organic, vivid sonics, the further away they’ve gotten from the wounded empathy that drove their earlier records. At least ice burns. Optica too often feels like nothing at all.

The Pineapple Thief remain stuck in a rut, delivering more or less the same record as before. Maybe going metal or full prog will yield better results in the future. Unfortunately, It Leads to This turned out only marginally better than the previous LP. They can do better, so a more drastic change of direction might be helpful next time.

Don’t rock up to this one expecting some life-changing epoch. Just roll with the punches.

For better or worse, there’s nothing new or surprising about Disturbed’s eighth release. On Divisive, the band don’t step outside their comfort zone, they don’t add any new elements, they don’t push the envelope on their established formula, they’re just Disturbed – but they’re Disturbed from their classic era, which is better than nothing.

Cracker Island is a perfectly good album made for an active audience larger and more diverse than most artistz could ever dream of having.

I Beat Loneliness continues their evolution, delivering an electronics-infused alternative metal sound that evolves into a melancholic and atmospheric catharsis that possesses a surprising authenticity and emotional resonance.

Although there are a handful of highlights, the group has settled into a comfort zone from which good tracks emerge effortlessly, but nothing outstanding.

In the end, The Thread that Keeps Us is a good Calexico record, still it doesn’t have outstanding peaks. It flows gently down the stream, yet besides a few memorable moments (all of them coming from the band’s comfort zone) there’s nothing to go crazy about.

While there's little substance to be found on 48:13, it can either turn you off from the beginning or get under your skin, making for a harmless listen where you occasionally bang your head to the catchy highlights.

This is a respectable effort, with glimmers of excellence in many places. Indeed, this could well be an entrancing listen for the right fan, but sadly, for me, neither the atmosphere or the instrumentation is enough to prevent my mind from frequently wandering away while listening.

is is (yikes) a low-stakes and contented release, quite enjoyable for what it is and wholly inessential.

For long-time listeners, there's a definite air of familiarity in each track, but this record can serve as an acceptable introduction to Alien Ant Farm.

There’s a lot of guests on this album and it brings a heterogeneous quality to Ordinary Man, but for the most part this aspect turns detrimental to the overall vision. Ozzy should have banded together a small fixture of musicians for the album and ran with a consistent tone that would see his mantra through to the end.

As it stands, Giving the World Away is a decent record with some excellent highlights, but also one that fails to live up to Hatchie’s potential. It’s somewhat frustrating, most of the time.

Although there's nothing innovative about it, at least they brought the guitars back, offering us a handful of groovy tracks among all the kitschy bonanza. The LP is stagnant in the grand scheme of things, but that's good for them. It could've been much worse.

Get Hurt may go down as The Gaslight Anthem's worst album to date, but that's not much of an assessment: a difficult Gaslight record is still a really good album, and it's commendable to experiment, evolve, or otherwise try something new.

The trio are at the top of their game, and if they haven’t grown out of their disposition for laboriously concocted indulgence, then they have at least worked out how to synthesise it towards more entertaining ends.

This album is certainly worth checking for those who found something to enjoy on Bonny Light Horseman, and even for those who simply desire a mellow folky listen, but don’t expect anything earth-shattering. Chalk it up as another pretty good effort from a supergroup.

It is only Avron's aforementioned huge-sounding production which separates You Me At Six from hundreds of similar bands, meaning that Cavalier Youth is neither cavalier, nor youthful enough to take them to the next level.

Scowl's push toward melodicism is overall a step in a positive direction; certainly nobody loves to see punks embrace melody more than me, but it feels like Scowl is still trying to appease their old fans and branch out at the same time, and they end up handicapping themselves in the process.

It all stacks up as an agreeable (not wonderful, definitely not boring) assortment of thumpers.

Many of these tracks do just straight up bang on an instinctual level. But in those times that this does work, when this really gets down to being something that ignites the mind and the heart, it does so very much in spite of its intellectual and artistic veneer, and not because of it.

Perfect Saviors probably could have been the quote best rock album ever. It should have been bigger. It should have been better. It could have been everything.

“Chasing Birds” and “Love Dies Young” are very forgettable, sure, “Cloudspotter” (with the exception of the guitar effect in the verse, which reminds me of Torche’s “Admission”) and “Waiting on a War” are a little flat and uninspired, but overall, this is a decent return for the band and it should quench any Foo Fighters fan's thirst.

Moosebumps is [not] a bad record, it’s simply a more polished rehash of a fantastic record from another time.

This is a solid slab of industrial metal without a distinguished bone in its body, and not much else. Here’s hoping for next time.

This is a transitory album true to its name and its concept, illustrating a challenging but ultimately temporary chapter in Silberman’s life. Of course it’s not his best work, but given the obstacles he’s faced, it’s not a bad first step as the world of indie-rock slowly regains one of its most talented and alluring artists.

As with Lover, folklore wears out its welcome by containing too many tracks. A tighter song list would have done a world of good.

Permalight was an unacceptable rocking of the boat. Nightingale Floors is an all too predictable response, then, safely ensconced as it is in the warm, reverb-heavy sound of beloved predecessors like 2005’s Descended Like Vultures and an atmosphere far more organic in tone and mood than Permalight.

CRASH might not be up there with her best, but it's still a good pop album, and worth trying for any fans of the genre.

It’s been five albums now with this formula, and I’m not saying I’m looking for a New Coke version of Tiny Moving Parts, the formula is very good, but it’s holding the band back from being anything more than pretty good.

Sparks is an album containing its share of diamonds, but only if you’re willing to sift through the rough in order to find them.

Metal Forth isn’t a bad album—it’s just deeply disappointing. It doesn’t feel like a new release, and more importantly, it doesn’t sound like a Babymetal album. Ironically, the three excellent original tracks only highlight what the rest of the album is missing.

The serene aesthetic is undisputedly the selling strength here, but if you’re looking for some of the band’s best creative ideas, you won’t find many of them here. Nevertheless, if you’re wanting a wholesome pop-rock album with plenty of experimentation, you may find a thing or two to like here.

It’s encouraging to see Thrice so keen to play with different palettes at this point in their career, and they clearly have enough of their old touch left to make those critical moments count. However, if Horizons / East really represents a new dawn for the band, one can only hope that its rays penetrate a little further across its recently confirmed sequel.