Intimacy, as an album, is hit-or-miss.

The problem with MU.ZZ.LE is that, as a self-produced effort, it blatantly lacks the restraint that might otherwise have seen this become something truly extraordinary.

All in all, Scurrilous succeeds at all levels. It takes the tediousness out of technicality, and injects more hooks than a tackle box into the Protest the Hero formula.

As it stands, we have Neighborhoods, large and vapid, every bit an inconsistent mess as it is a guilty pleasure.

Culture II sounds like a satire of every other rap album released by a major label these days, catering to the lowest common denominator of casual music listener. As a business decision, it’s genius; as a piece of music, it’s little more than an elaborate consumer scam.

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.

One can't help but feel that Avary's grasp on quality control is waning, with too many of these--admittedly solid and likable--twelve tracks delivering predictable and forgettable results that fail to reach any great heights.

The primary drawback here is that even though the album does occasionally ascend to great heights, it spends at least the same amount of time strolling through monotonous buildups that never really reach their destinations.

It’s not a bad album, but it is hindered with a lack of understanding on what made the band so great to begin with. So, prepare to experience as many rough moments as there is smooth ones.

These ten mostly filler-free tracks prove, Nada Surf only look to be growing more confident in their old age.

They’ll never be one of the greats, but Band of Horses have proved that they’ve near mastered the art of making quality, old-fashioned rock ‘n roll.

Part of me wishes that Swift would do a bit more soul-searching. The Life of a Showgirl is good entertainment, but I'm still trying to figure out how any of it matters on a deeper level. If you’re not fully invested in all aspects of her life, and whatever drama stems from it, then it’s tough to get emotionally on board. That makes this a glossy, surface level pop record for the majority of listeners. It’s arguably her most infectious, energetic, and fun release in several years, which will buy this LP some instant mileage in terms of streams, but I wonder how its replay value will hold up once the novelty wears off.

Slaughterhouse hearkens back to the early days of the New York hardcore underground, and it's a travesty that it does nothing more. With commonplace soul-influenced boom bap at the fore, compositions this anachronistic just don't cut it in 2009.

Hush not only breaks down new barriers for the band, but more importantly, is just a pleasure to listen to.

Positive Songs for Negative People lives up to its name and is an enjoyably straight forward record. Unfortunately, the album’s biggest strength also holds it back from ranking among his finest, as the overarching optimism makes the record feel slightly thin and superficial compared to his previous offerings.

Del sways wildly between hit and miss. And Eleventh Hour, for all its boisterous and awkward handling, fails with a resounding thud.

Float is rescued from abject tedium by the deep, poetic lure of the subject matter and a couple of genuinely outstanding compositions in ‘Float’ and ‘(No More) Paddy’s Lament.’

Noel has crafted one of those rare gems in an LP where every track is a potential single.

It’s not bad in the sense its unredeemable, just in the sense that it fails to do what it wants to really, really hard.

This album is simply objectively terrible. Issues have managed to craft an album that is entirely without any sort of value, appeal, artistic merit, creativity.

For a band that once never failed to make an impression, be it positive or nauseating, the fact that the best Hysterical can muster is indifference is simply disappointing.

Kindly Now isn't perfect, and feels more like a transition to something truly spectacular where everything in Henson's bag of tricks can be perfectly utilised; for now, it'll do just fine.

Neck of the Woods marks interesting territory in their development; it both stands its ground and stretches its legs without actually feeling like it's desperate to do either.

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.

The production quality does most of the work here, because when you listen, everything seems relatively simple. And that’s not a bad thing by any means.

Its faults are minimal, though its highs are somewhat indistinguishable. In the end, you're left with a wash of mid-paced, hook-laden and relatively solid post-post-hardcore.

If you liked the Com Truise of old, you will almost certainly enjoy this, and if you've ever been skeptical about the quality of music that chillwave would be able to produce, Wave 1 should dispel all doubts. Highly recommended.

You Will Eventually Be Forgotten offers nothing new nor does it pay respectable homage to its influences.

This is a very nice record, yet feels more settled overall. Nevertheless, it's a matter of choice rather than quality.

Ultimately, regardless of how invested you choose to be in the sentiments of pessimism and dejection, Asphalt for Eden is thoughtful and eclectic, blending elements of shoegaze, industrial, boom-bap, and ambience both sedative and rousing. All the while, it balances a grim, overarching societal direction with a thwarted attitude.

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.

Taylor opts for interchangeable melodies that never really threaten to take attention away from the lyrics, which function more as tabloid clarification than earnest poetry. I struggle to hum a single melody but, against my will, I can make an educated guess as to what song is a Matty Song or a Travis Song or a Joe song.

Overall, 4:13 Dream is an extremely consistent album throughout its runtime.

As gorgeous a Ryan Adams record as anything in his own catalog.

The material is of a consistently high standard, nary a clunker in the bunch, but while many will be surprised by Send Away The Tigers, few will be bowled over.

All in all, The General Strike is all we can really ask for from Anti-Flag these days: a solid set of tunes for the pinko bastard in all of us.

It’s not as consistently good as Now What?! and it doesn’t contain inFinite’s peaks. Nonetheless, it’s classy, enjoyable, and it’s certainly commendable to see legendary musicians who have nothing to prove, feel the desire to express themselves artistically.

Brimming with melody and bustling with energy, The Rentals have made a statement album out of Lost In Alphaville.

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

She sounds like she truly cares and poured her heart into her songs (and most of them are indeed co-written by her), with the overall result feeling satisfyingly emotional and incredibly fulfilling... something that couldn't be said as strongly about an album like She Wolf.

Overall, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons shows A Silver Mount Zion at their hardest rocking, their most powerful, and their most irritating.

It’s an enjoyable ride, I can’t take that away from it, but replayability is slim and it quickly unveils humdrum and vapid songwriting the more you settle yourself into it. As with any album post De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Daemon serves up another solid dose of black metal that pales next to the album that started it all.

There is nothing overblown about the album, there's no sense of superiority here. This is the proof that Cudi fell from grace but was able to gracefully climb out of that dark place with a desire to be better, not just for himself, but for us.

Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow is the band's best release to date.

For better or for worse, Torches is a product of the here and now, and who can be mad at Foster the People for seizing it for all its worth? Get it while it lasts, boys.

Dom's sound has enough edge to satisfy the critics and enough energy to satisfy everyone else, but for what it's worth, this is the kind of album you don't have to think about for even a moment; sit back, sing a long, play it in the background, it doesn't matter. Just enjoy.

It does feel lesser when compared to Blems After Banging’s debut LP, partly because a lot of the novel intrigue has washed away post-Cry, but also because it feels slightly incremental in its employment of familiar tropes and introduction of diverting yet somewhat unnecessary ones. Nevertheless, the record still possesses an intoxicatingly spacey sense of style, the ambience of the music permeating the atmosphere and remaining like the smell of exhaled smoke. Whether it lingers for seconds, days, months, or even years after is a question entirely dependent on the listener.

SMD's latest is an exploration not just in sound, but in concept; it feels like a defining statement, not just for them but for dance music in general.

As with anything, there's catch; the 'good' only lasts four songs and about fifteen minutes out of a fifteen song, fifty-five minute record.

More than ever before, these songs spin on their own axes: and that fact alone makes this record as positive a step forward for Tycho as anything.

When You See Yourself is a welcoming return to form for Kings of Leon. It’s a nostalgia sucker punch for those in the right time, in the right place. It's an album that their fanbase will revel in.

What’s impressive is the wide swathes of bubblegum pop Vol. 1 manages to cover.

All You Can Eat is easily the band's funniest and most diverse offering to date, their confidence coming out in full force this time around.

It is a legitimately excellent record that lives up to (and sometimes even exceeds) the song writing standards set by the band on "Dirt" or "Jar of Flies."

His albums are usually quite long, but this one with its near hour and a half runtime might be a chore to sit through for even the most die-hard Sun Kil Moon fans. But there are some extraordinary movements on this thing.

Rumors of punk's demise may be exaggerated, but perhaps someone should tell Almqvist and company that it's long over for them.

At its core, Embracism is a full-fledged artistic statement that's at once endearing and wildly eccentric.

The Stepford wives of shoegaze.

Their debut LP does succeed, however, in meeting the expectations of their target demographic; delivering a consistent batch of ten catchy tracks that waste very little time getting to their contagious choruses.

Night of Hunters feels refreshing, unique, and utterly lovely; it's another great success in a career that has quite a few of them.

Simply put, Two Fingers is pretty much everything that anyone with an interest in clubtronica has been waiting for.

Metal Galaxy is easily the best and most entertaining release of Babymetal’s career, featuring a diverse array of songs that are all capably carried by Suzuka’s proficient vocals, improved songwriting, and an excellent production.

This album is surely a success, its just there is a lot of things that a great album like 'My Life in the Bush of The Ghosts' (which Ghosts sincerely seems indebted to) have that are missing here.

Forcefield stands proudly on its own, a meat-and-potatoes rock record that swings for the FM fences and gets by on Monks’ considerable personality and the band’s seemingly limitless energy.

Although Freedom isn’t the return fans were hoping for, there’s enough experimentation here to at least remind old fans of what made them adore the band in the first place.

No World For Tomorrow is Coheed doing what they do best; writing an excellent album, where the songs combine for a bigger effect together than they do individually.

This album finds Kasher engaging with capitalism in a way not heard since “Dorothy at Forty”, but while that song pointed out the excesses of the stereotypical American dream, songs like “Under the Rainbow” lament the deletion of that dream from our lives.

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.

It does nothing to distinguish itself from other BR releases and some of the premier punk albums released in the past few years, but it also can immediately trump most of the stuff being put out these days on the virtue of BR's tight and likable style.

The truth is that there are things to like here – namely some new percussive elements and O’Connor’s ever-rich voice – but Solar Power comes across as painfully flat compared to her first two records.

Interview Music is a record as dense and conflicted as the frontman’s gobbledygook would have us believe he is as a writer. Whereas before his depictions were flavorful and bolstered by solid REM-like rock songs from his surrounding team, here highlight pickings for intelligent insights are slim, and Idlewild as a whole sound lost and in the process of aging horribly.

[Maybe for] the first time, A Sleep And A Forgetting gets at the heart of an artist who, over years of project changes and name switches, has remained frustratingly opaque.

Despite being derivative, Esoteric Warfare is worthy of praise, because it keeps alive a sound practised by merely a handful of outfits, some of them sadly disbanded.

There are times where the record behaves so obtusely it could be trying to shut its own audience out (example: the conflicting rhythms in Bread directly averse to a “population of people who deal in cliché”), but finding the hidden entry points is half the fun. The other half is trying not to trip up on your way in.

While it doesn’t quite reach the songwriting highs and wrenching lows of 2006’s Nux Vomica (few things do), Total Depravity avoids the dead spots that have plagued the Veils’ last two records by ensuring that atmosphere of dread remains consistent.

The notable tracks certainly makes this far away from a failure and the record as a whole is yet another solid presentation of Frusciante's unique take on his own solo career.

Using Shallow and Waterworks as benchmarks, this doesn't even come close; it's glaringly obvious that the addition of a third member has wreaked havoc on the formula.

Unfortunately, it’s little more than a bland exercise in pop that the band needs in order to sell records and tour again.

Moral Panic is simultaneously the most depressing and fun rock record of 2020, and that’s got to count for something.

In all, Clash the Truth is a major step forward for Beach Fossils, and it’s certainly an album that I’m not going to forget about so easily, if ever at all.

Overall, Come Ahead turned out one of the most encompassing affairs in the group’s discography. The attention to detail paid off and there’s enough cohesiveness too. Nevertheless, Gillespie’s redundant voice and lyrics are often too angular, but that’s the hit and miss element all Primal Scream’s full lengths share.

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.

Eat the Elephant is engaging, atmospheric rock done right with intelligent lyrics and ambitious themes.

A handful of jukebox-friendly hard rock tracks and a thoroughly replayable album is almost as good an outcome as could be expected from this group of aging rockers.

It's hard not to inflate the rating of a record with some truly incredible joints, yet it's difficult to ignore the two-thirds filler combined with Ghostface's least complicated rhymes in years.

Audio, Video, Disco has neither creativity nor moxie, except in the sense that Justice is damn determined to give homage to the worst excesses of macho rock posturing.

Monogamy falls somewhere near the bottom rung. The indie game has changed. Without the Cursive name behind him, Tim Kasher is, sadly, not much of a player.

Born Again is easily one of the best indie-rock/dream-pop debuts to come out in years. Siggelkow’s firm handle on her sound is genuinely remarkable – it seems like she’s been doing this for decades and that Born Again is the album that finally ties it all together.

While it's not without its obvious highlights, All Hope is Gone feels too much like a demo with professional production values to make me recommend it as an album.

Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazon doesn’t expand on its original ideas, it gives you less – a familiar, now tenebrous and barren wasteland. The bottom line being; when your reimagined version makes an already lethargic album look like an action-packed thrill ride, you know you've got problems.