Release The Stars, if not a step forward, is at worst a side-step en route on to a knockout album.

Sure, the lyrics are better, the songs aren’t quite as boring, but it’s becoming harder and harder to defend this band on the charge of being dad rock.

MGMT have (purposely?) lost that instant magic that they effortlessly whipped up with those debut singles, and in trying to re-establish themselves as artists that don't need the commercial mainstream to survive, they've created a record that lacks any defining characteristics to call its own.

Bando Stone... really is just an excuse for Glover to flex his acclaimed range, with a mishmash of tracks that presumably gel with moments in the movie given the snippets of dialogue peppered throughout. The price of this lost cohesion is that the man really does have the range to pull all this off.

It's not just the sound, but the structure of the songwriting which can lack variation. Nevertheless, Big Echo, especially its first half, proves my initial thought when first running the record through. The Morning Benders definitely are a band worth getting excited about.

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.

The Other Side of Make-Believe preserves the band’s haunted post punk proclivities, but the subtle positive messaging from Banks (and occasionally from the instrumentals) adds another layer of depth to the band’s sound. ... This is easily one of the best albums of 2022, and it stands up to some of Interpol’s greatest works.

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends takes a band who should have been in decline and a sound that’s been tried and true and makes it all sound fantastically fresh.

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.

Silver Wilkinson is a more streamlined yet enjoyably disparate record.

They might always struggle to recapture the spark that drove their first two albums, but The National Health might just be what the doctor ordered.

Without over-embellishing it at all, you won’t find too many albums in the quintet’s chosen genre that betters the quality, consistency and diversity of Nerve Endings.

United Crushers can come across as a draining listen, perhaps even an uncomfortable one to those accustomed to their earlier work. It takes a few listens to discern the resolve in Leaneagh’s lyrics, but it’s there.

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.

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

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.

Simply put, Fate is a refreshment of the sound that has been missing for so long.

Those songs are products of an ambition that hasn't quite been tamed, but on the majority of Goblin, Tyler genuinely uses his creative freedom to create the fantastic.

It’s all memorable, and it’s all worth listening to again and again.

Some of the most spotlessly produced music I’ve heard in my lifetime, let alone this year. Gonzalez unfortunately continues to struggle with cohesion and distilling his musical ideas down to their most valuable elements, but his latest full-length is an undeniable improvement over his mid-late 2010’s output, and hopefully the beginning of a long upward trajectory for the M83 brand.

No matter what musical approach is being explored on Is This The Life We Really Want?, it never abandons being clever and lyrically adept.

Ringo remains Ringo, for better and worse. And in keeping with the hangdog Ringo persona this isn’t even the best country-adjacent album by a Beatle. It’s an album for Ringo Starr, and if we can’t give it any sort of adulation, we can at least respect its intentions, and those of the artists who made it.

Wooden Shjips succeed in making their material as easy listening and cool as possible, and tread on the trails of acclaimed artists such as Tom Petty.

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.

From here ["Man on a Mission"], the album meanders a bit, yet manages to maintain a solid presence. No Rain, No Flowers ends up their most mature effort to date.

Sigel is too erratic to fully allow his album to mesh well upon itself. But that is why it works so well anyway, The Solution as much Sigel’s fresh step into untested waters as it is a fall back into a well-worn groove.

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.

...Of The Dark Light simply suffers from a lack of purpose, as if it was penned and recorded just to fulfil the band’s onus to Nuclear Blast. Entire cuts come and go without having done anything worth remembering, and the ones that stick in your mind often do for the wrong reasons.