For fans of Pretty Lights, A Color Map of the Sun is an acceptable recreation of his wild live show, if nothing else. For those looking to get into the real contradiction of Smith, the album makes for a wonderful primer.

Silversun Pickups’ fifth full-length sees the band craft another very enjoyable alt-rock album, but it’s one that is full of holes. For every catchy melody, they seem to abandon their creative spirit. When they aspire for the stars artistically, they can’t seem to locate their tune sense.

Pulls its weight at the points that count, fumbles mainly at those that don't, feels less successful holistically than it does as the sum of its parts, leaves me with anything but satisfaction by the time it's done, and does very little to address the question of when Shepherd will finally show the chutzpah and scope of vision to make a truly great work on solely his own terms.

This is verse-chorus-verse as pleasantly intuitive as it comes, thematically light yet with enough room for the musicians to show their considerable skill.

Big Red Machine is an exercise in expectation and follow-through, and in how throwing a bunch of good ideas at a song doesn’t make a good song, nor a bunch of great tracks onto vinyl wax a great album.

Liturgy of Death is still a decent slab of black metal, but for a band that has released so many classic albums full of banger riffs, hellish drum performances and demonic vocals, this album just doesn't measure up.

Hyperdrama will ultimately please fans who enjoyed their last two albums, but for anyone else hoping for a more adventurous LP that captures the succinct, edgy and grimy attitude of Cross, you’re going to be left disappointed. Justice’s fourth album caters to the radio-friendly masses, and frankly, they do a good job of it.

The main problem it faces is trying to successfully combine her new, slower palate with the tense, rapid-fire elements she's known for. To anyone who has been listening to her discography for long, this is clearly something that will be difficult for anyone to pull off. And to her credit, she tries.

Reachy Prints is yet another tedious exercise in modern IDM attempting to stay relevant, and failing to do a very good job of convincing us listeners that it is.

Winter’s Gate is entirely enjoyable throughout--nothing is even close to being poorly written or executed--it is just that there are almost no moments in the entire 40 minutes that I would call exceptional, where the band went above and beyond to craft something truly memorable.

There are a handful of potential hits on Distortland, still they needed some structuring or at least a more powerful instrumental to be compelling.

Not everything's entirely stale, though. On the whole, the djent factor of the album is lower than most others (spare, perhaps, Juggernaut: Alpha) and the inclusion of orchestral elements throughout makes things feel a little more open, inviting, and intriguing.

Despite being frustratingly inconsistent though, Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness is still a step in the right direction.

Add Violence returns us to the bite-sized pop with-a-dark-side which has been Reznor's bread and butter since 2005, but without the energy of Dave Grohl pounding the drum kit like it said a bad word about Kurt Cobain.

While Die Without Hope is a mixed bag, I enjoyed it enough to at least recommend it to Carnifex fans, fans of deathcore, or even fans of blackened death metal who are looking at a band with some potential in the genre.

It's really cool on paper, a showcase of obvious and enormous talent with an extensive feature list that manages to satiate fans’ long-awaited fantasies while still giving them opportunities to explore new discographies. yet somehow it still ends up much smaller than the sum of its parts, particularly the main star.

Some of it wants to carry on the torch of its predecessor, other parts of it want to redefine Karnivool, and other parts don’t even seem to have any discernible purpose, like those god-awful interludes.

“Reluctant Hero”’s post-rock introduction and its booming mid-section pay-off delivers one of the crowning highlights for the entire album, while the rest of the record is peppered with great reverb-y, ambient soundscapes and really well-executed vocal performances from all parties involved, unearthing the squandered potential here. Unfortunately, these aspects are definitely overlooked in favour of the aforementioned thrash-y, hardcore sound.

Pure Comedy is definitively a headphone album; where I Love You, Honeybear made you swoon with its overt eclecticism, the gems here need to be unearthed after a few excavations. The album’s pacing does not help matters, burdened with a middle section that dares you to fall asleep and counts on a deep love of Tillman’s voice.

While often a little too unfocused, The Anthropocene Extinction is a fine addition to their catalog.

Whatever Funk’s motivation in pumping out yet another breakcore grenade in his long line of breakcore grenades, My Love is a Bulldozer is at the very least an engaging listen--make of that what you will.

As with many records that share Wake Up’s exuberant qualities, the individual tracks are largely hit-or-miss.

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.

There are times when the idea of experimentation can become too much to bear.

The sound quality is, by all accounts, mediocre, but the raw nature of the music reflects the “one day” aspect of their motto.

Port of Morrow seems much more a step sideways than forward for Mercer, not so much a dramatic comeback but more a compilation of greatest hits masquerading as new songs.

In the realm of Sigur Rós, it's akin to breathing plain fresh air: in some contexts, refreshing, but in others, just... there.

With cliches becoming scarcer, there is clearly lyrical growth evident, yet one could hardly call them ground-breaking or especially relatable.

Go Now and Live is by no means a bad album, since it is a solidly composed, straight-ahead rock release with some satisfyingly driving rhythms. The experience may even assist the growth of this talented band, rather than hamper it. Too often though, the songwriting feels incomplete.

It’s still a well-produced record that plods along with a rustic charm and the occasional hook, but anyone who has followed Morby throughout his career knows he could be an icon in the modern indie-folk scene. Since 2017, however, it’s been a collage of pretty, forgettable albums. As it stands, Kevin Morby is as Kevin Morby does.

It's contorted, full of loose ends, songwriting peculiarities and recurring cryptic imagery, and, although many individual moments do overtly recall other artists, it hangs together with such an uneasy balance of inner tension and stubbornly foregrounded idiosyncrasies that you will be unlikely to mistake it for anyone else.

While Saints Of Los Angeles is occasionally stunning, as is consistent with Sixx’s recent return to form, it often sounds too much like something Nikki Sixx would expect Crüe fans to like, rather than the top-class rock n’ roll he’s time-and-time-again proven himself capable of making.

While sounding more like a compilation of singles than a fully cohesive album, One Love could in fact be the release that finally wins over both the dedicated weekend club-goers, as well as the stay-at-home older generation looking to revisit their youth.

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.

With Resistance is Futile, they’ve finally caught up with their own reality and decided to produce the one album they never made; a serviceable rock album.

The worst thing about Born To Die is that even its great songs contain problems.

Notes on a Conditional Form is The 1975 as we know them – just good enough to not be bad.

There's a huge promise to Fleet Foxes, one that can't be ignored, but Pecknold and the rest of the guys haven't tapped into it yet.

An album this tepid--which is to say, not completely tepid, but tepid enough--from a talent that immense, though, can only register as a minor failure. She can do better. The sonic virtues of her performance on Pang, however mixed, guarantee that I'll be listening.

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

When it's good, it's really good. Otherwise, it's never really bad, just excessive and somewhat unfocused.

eternal sunshine, at 35 minutes, doesn’t leave much of an impression, its titular statement of pretty regard for memories lost and time regained ultimately registering not as a platform for yearning nor as a vehicle for regret nor as ironic joke nor social commentary but as the broadest possible thread of aesthetic inspiration for pretty regard for such immaterial concepts as memories, time, gain, loss. The songwriting is the main culprit

End is better than passable - I’ve heard far worse even in its genre. But, as things are, this record feels redundant. Explosions in the Sky, at this stage of their careers, need to give us a whole lot more in order to really deliver. Maybe that’s not fair, but let me tell ya somethin’, kid: life ain’t always fair.

The second half of the album is much more consistent if you still feel like listening, but beyond a spare moment or two (“This Blackest Purse” is surprisingly touching), most of Eskimo Snow is easily surpassed by other songs from Why?’s catalogue.

The inconsistencies within Green Language, unfortunately, undermine the potential beauty of the album’s closing few minutes.

The first three songs will undoubtedly hook any listener into continuing the album, but the listener will find nothing as impressive as that opening statement.

Fans of the band will have a blast for as long as this one lasts, feel proud for the old boys, and probably revisit it very rarely in the future.

Ultimately Kids in the Street will go down as a solid album that is an ambitious and interesting grower... Nothing more, nothing less.

Similes is, while a pretty record, oddly disjointed, a collection of pretty chord changes without an identity to give it life.

Kintsugi suffers from many of the same flaws that have afflicted past releases, from a tendency to overthink arrangements to Gibbard’s more frequent relapses into trite turns of phrase and the occasional hint of immaturity.

There is really nothing bad about what Opeth have presented us here, but after ten full lengths they're starting to develop a moderate case of Dream Theater syndrome, although obviously less self-indulgent.

There are just a few riffs and grating melodies that spoil what could have been an album that was at least as strong as its predecessor.

It's a righting of the ship back to the quality control we've come to expect from the Raveonettes but nevertheless still an accomplished retread of a formula, nothing more.

Given the great work apparent on the album’s first half, it’s a pity to see the album slide to a close so disappointingly.

Bodies is a well put together album that will appease hungry fans, but it's not the injection of life that AFI so desperately needs at this stage of its career.

Although there exist exceptions, like the gorgeous “Used” (in which Monroe drops this corker: “Used, like a house where a family lived until they died and there’s a soul in every room”), the record as a whole slithers into a sort of unsatisfying middle ground.

With The World I Want To Leave Behind, Moneen have grown up and taken a turn towards a more mainstream sound. The concern has to be whether they have turned too far and become just another run-of-the-mill radio rock outfit.

It’s a credit to Cults that Static is such an enticing initial listen; no one now is pulling the retro Spector treatment with as much stylistic confidence as they are. Over time, though, Static becomes more of the same, that doomed relationship that your friend just won’t get over.

Afflicted in the end with a touch of offputting sameyness, LEGACY! LEGACY! nonetheless has remarkable staying power and a gracious ambition to in some small way materially improve the world of which it is an image. Aesthetic or not, that's worth something.

It's an important album for Scuba, as a means of transition, of mastering his new craft. It's just not a terribly important album for the rest of us.

Strings, masses of fans, and stadium-size choruses make up the patchwork for the majority of this album; the end result is pretentious and overblown, but that doesn’t stop This Is War from succeeding--well, for the most part anyway.

Harper sounds hardly inspired even in a city like Paris, and his homage to past artists sounds like cheap imitation more than anything.

There’re a lot of fumbles here unfortunately, a couple tepid ballads, a lot of irritating goon-hop, and a couple songs that go on for far too long (though most of those fall under one of the former categories.) However, the band impress again on ‘Touch too Much’, possibly the album’s best track.

I Disagree is a record you’ll want to enjoy, but not necessarily analyze. It’s perfect for a romp down the highway at 90 MPH, or engulfing your personal critics in flames. It’s not going to spark much conversation intellectually or musically, with the caveat to the latter being the obvious hype that will emanate from just how contagiously fun it is.

On their third outings most bands attempt to step up their game in terms of consistent songwriting. Instead, there's as many skippable tracks on this record as those worth revisiting. Mere competency is not sufficient to turn heads, especially in the year that abounds in high-quality stoner rock releases.

Immolate Yourself is a finely produced record, and still features a good chunk of material worth listening to, even if it doesn't exactly stack up with the duo's previous efforts.

Glitterbug is pleasant enough and far from a chore to listen to, even if it feels too safe and inoffensive to warrant repeated listening.

Angles ends in a horribly frustrating manner, with none of the assurance of "Take it or Leave It" or "Red Light." No, Angles, even in ending with its strongest song, dies the way it lived: in sheer ambiguity.

There is nothing radical or daring about the faithfully rendered tunes we find on Twelve.

'My Gun' is one of the best tracks Fifty's lent his name to; Adam Deitch and Eric Krasno's skilful production keeps the tension bubbling just below the surface with a muted hard rock guitar riff; 50's rhyme and flow is more varied and expressive than his usual monotone drawl.... The remainder of the album is as inconsistent as Fifty’s career to date.

One listen to this album though and you come to realise that its Noel's absence that has made it.

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).

Swallow the Sun should have released this as three separate albums. The connection between the three pieces is frail, and given the relative lack of direction this is not a surprise. The album’s strengths are numerous, yet scattered, and its weaknesses are unfortunately a lot more concentrated.

This Delicate Thing We’ve Made is undone by too much, too much, too much of everything. Too many ideas aren’t allowed to compete with each other, meaning that the bad ideas are given just as much importance as the good ones.

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

Kasher still embraces his flaws and while that may not work to the record's advantage when it does Cursive hits hard as ever.

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.

This Is A Photograph is an album which aims for an impressively grand vision, but rarely hits the mark. In its less grandiose moments, though, it’s frequently successful, providing the listener with a number of lovely folk tunes.

At the end of the day, this album might not be what the change-resistant fans wanted to hear but it was necessary and more importantly, they pull it off quite well.

None of these songs will top the charts, and none of them are very immediate, but they work together like a well-oiled machine that delivers a relatively accurate depiction of how you might feel while reading the book or watching the film.

It’s not all bad, but one can’t help but think that this fifteen-track recording is a long album for someone with nothing to say.

Personal Life is nothing new for the Thermals, but that doesn't mean that it's nothing to write home about. It still packs enough of a punch to please the most diehard of fans.

For the first time, the band is inconsistent.

Polaris is well-produced (even if the bass is dialed in several clicks too high), decently written, and properly executed for what it is. Critically speaking, however, it takes few musical risks and fails to launch any sort of vocal or instrumental melody, relegating it to a position as the sort of album you could take or leave in an artist's discography.

Grande is adding herself to several distinct sonic palates, putting her own indelible stamp on fundamentally disparate productions while letting them exist in different spaces. It doesn’t sound as free and natural as much of her previous work, but maybe that awkward hollowness is the point.

The Vision is a true mixed bag that while offering up a few outstanding gems, disappoints more than it probably should and reveals its maker as far less of a visionary as we all assumed him to be.

Jukebox isn’t a misstep, but it does seem like a unnecessary lull towards an album that might build on the promise of Jukebox’s best assets, the most important ones being of Chan’s own, warming design.

To be honest, Super Critical is simply a cute record that shows they are back on track after a few years of less successful experiments.

Chalk Color Theory up as a sophomore slump - a misstep she’s not likely to repeat - and the most aggressively OK album of 2020.

Surprisingly, The Cool works as an album despite its many obvious flaws: the pop tracks are as good as anything from his debut, and his attempts to branch out are at least hit and miss, with exciting tracks like ‘Little Weapon’ and ‘Dumb It Down’ breaking the monotony of his soapbox moments.

That’s the biggest problem with Station: it’s not a bad record, it just tries to be too “gargantuan” for its own good.

For better or worse, it's the most predictable album of the year.

Colbie’s soothing vocals, the warm sound of the music, and the memorable choruses are all well worth listening to this for when the mood for something easy hits you.

Even though it can be repetitive at times, it still possesses enough standout moments to keep it from fading into oblivion.

If you've heard the albums it's drawing its material from, you've already got all of those secrets figured out. Ultimately, that renders this album as a novelty of sorts, a release that should only have a footnote in the story of her career rather than its own chapter.

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

Though I can't say this album has as many of these killer tracks as Xiu Xiu's previous albums, Women as Lovers is a satisfying installment for fans of Xiu Xiu's singular style.

The Loveliest Time is the most B-sideular ‘album’ experience I’ve found in my paws so far this year: its consistency is gaseous, its stylistic hopscotch is even more erratic than that of its sister album, it is a product of the same sessions, and - most importantly - it contains a large chunk of the weakest Carly Rae Jepsen tracks to date.