In Colour breaks no new ground to be sure, but as an accessible crossover record it does a perfectly serviceable job. It's light, breezy and pretty, as ephemeral as the exhilaration of clubbing without really evoking the thrill of it all.

To be sure, his willingness to descend into darkness, both regarding the world and within himself, is a large part of the man's appeal, but here he seems to have misunderstood, or simply ignored, what makes him truly great.

Where Nothing Feels Natural suffers is in the R&D department. Many of the ideas only make a couple of appearances. ... Still, there’s quite a lot to like here, and it’s mostly due to Greer--the speak-sing existentialism of ‘No Big Bang’, the Everything Goes Wrong-era Vivian Girls homage on ‘Nothing Feels Natural’, the ragged heartbeat of ‘Appropriate’.

God’s Favorite Customer isn’t a bad album, yet it still feels like the weak link in the grand scheme of things. Fans of his previous work will still get a lot out of Misty's latest, but despite its subject matter, this album feels a little safe and inconsequential.

Garbus' sound is still a little too vague, still in need of some real streamlining; the promise remains blindingly obvious, but the execution, for my money at least, is still missing.

Nektyr is a tough record to like. Fans of Cocteau Twins may be better placed than I to pierce the veil and properly appreciate the wonders within. For me, trying to pull away the mud and heavily-baked conceit left me exhausted.

This collection would've been much better off as a coherent release if it came on just one disc. Two discs and thirty-one tracks really is a bit testing and the songs eventually feel like they've overstayed their welcome.

Hourglass Pond is an off-balance album. If you played the album to someone who didn’t know Tare had a new album, it would be very unclear where it belongs in his discography.

Her weary disposition begs for songs that are stripped down and reduced to their component parts--songs that don't fuss around. That's the problem--the fussing, the instinct to add more. It sounds like she's reaching for something, but she doesn't know what it is or where to find it.

Green Twins is impeccably tailored and has some gorgeous ideas. What it lacks is the confidence to stretch its colour palette into areas the listener might not immediately associate with other, trailblazing artists.

The majority of Fear Inoculum’s songs are more or less interchangeable, achieving the same overall effect in slightly different ways. ... Toolheads will find much to enjoy here, I am sure of it.

Vessel's ambition has exceeded his abilities. By trading in his synth for sheet metal he has lost out on what caused people to stand up and take notice.

There is a pleasing directness of intention to the metronomic drumming and the arpeggiated keyboards that would be sufficient to keep a crowd dancing but look beyond the surface level and there is unfortunately plenty to make you cringe, too.

The talented likes of Lisa Hannigan and Sharon Van Etten attempt to breathe life into affairs, but there’s no resuscitating a creature that never breathed to begin with. No less, they for some reason decided to draw this death rattle out across their longest album to date, blindly moping through an inexplicably sixty-three minute run time.

Rhythm is a collection of great ideas, improperly organised and occasionally poorly executed.

The success of Emotion and its predecessor, Kiss, was a product of balance. ... Side B does not find that balance, and is most instructive in the ways it illuminates her process. It lets us peek in on the misfits that are the product of every pop album, and hints at the unsexy labor of music-making.

Despite the lack of variance from song to song, each of the 10 songs here are finely written candidates for radio. ... The issue is that it’s not worth it to dig through all 10 of these tracks to find the nuanced intricacies that so frequently play second fiddle to loud rock and roll.

The album suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, it is an honest album as the name suggests but it seems Future has difficulties in being an artist who feels the need to balance his street upbringing with his skill at writing, what are essentially, hip-hop love songs.

Unfortunately, the album ends up being a whole that is less than the sum of its parts, making no real impact on the listener as it quietly meanders along.

The production is tidy but one note, the instrumentation resolutely professional. The vocalist has a few touchstones and reverently shifts from one to another without exactly lighting any fires of his own. Back in 1992 they would call this alternative rock.

Darren Hayman has undoubtedly done a good thing here, and so it seems a shame that the musical result sounds so uninspiring.

This is still a lovely, lovely record, on the surface at least; I'm not sure it'll stand up quite as well to heavy rotation as its predecessor.

Crutchfield is baring her soul and just about every song shows some signs of greatness. It comes up short, but not for a lack of trying.

i,i is an album meant to please their least demanding customers; a session of pure, light nostalgia, and given the band’s rabid following, it’s still certain to succeed, even to receive knee jerk, overeager accolades. That’s all well and good, but it’s hard not to recall just how much more these guys are capable of.

Unfortunately, Morby's latest effort seems to purposefully aim for the very middlest of the road.

Only ‘Peanut Butter’ stands out amongst the morass by dint of its crashing introduction. Even that track eventually settles down into the record’s bloated template. It’s a shame, because there are some lovely moments.

Dwyer’s band are still the masters of genre-leading and genre-defining garage-psych-founded mayhem but Face Stabber veils that slightly behind bloated long cuts and a lack of standout individual tracks.

It has interesting moments and one cannot really fault Kozelek for looking to present a different narrative than his previous record. But there is no denying that Benji set a high bar and this record borrows elements from it, but does so with disappointing results.

Sadly, the songs on the back half would sound much better as instrumentals. I miss the incoherent wailing of their 00s output. The Guillotine remains a somewhat worthy listen via its front four tracks.

The Moon Rang Like A Bell starts off with captivating momentum, a potential to take you on a whimsical, emotional journey. But along the way it seems to have sacrificed that sense of purity first apparent in its experimentation.

Their third album, Until Silence, is a pleasant listen, but falls at a couple of key moments.

It is the lack of cohesion between music and voice that remains the most prominent feature of the album and its biggest stumbling point; leaving May a disappointing effort from an artist that we know can do better.

It's a pity they remain slavishly committed to a successful template and too often Atlas feels like a memory of a memory.

Bottle It In does enough to keep himself and his fans happy, but it leaves waiting those of us that wish a bit more from him.

It's encouraging that there are some clear signs of expansion on Brightly Painted One, but the question now is whether Tiny Ruins really have anywhere else to go.

The result is a mixed bag of songs with which the group continue to earn their moniker, through moody orchestral pop pieces adorned with the group’s signature electronics, but we’re left wondering whether the soundtrack might have been more interesting.

Clocking in at just over twelve minutes, Sunne is a jarringly short EP in a genre that has always been characterised by these expansive and immersive albums.

The ideas are fleshed out so well sometimes, and it's upsetting that I have to wait until 'City' to once again get to a place where the records conciseness is shared with its depth.

It's decent and fairly enjoyable, but nothing astounds.

Cabello is finding her footing, and with more swings than misses here, the album signals a hopeful future for a fledgling pop giant.

The band still show the glimmer of potential they’ve always carried, and it’s nice to know that consistency is possible with the band. ‘Doctor’s In' ends with an abrupt fadeout, and your memory of Tasmania can depart at a similarly unsatisfying rate.

Long time fans of Nadler’s work won’t be disappointed, but overall For My Crimes feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. She may sing about throwing keys, but the reality is this album won’t be taking anyone’s eye out anytime soon.

If, after an absence of 19 years, you are happy to engage with a band who are reprising much of their musical and lyrical themes whilst also dipping their toes into unexplored (and poorly realised) terrain, then no doubt there is much within White Stuff which will tick all of the appropriate boxes. But, oh man, that Kool Keith track.

Public Service Broadcasting's intentions are to be praised, even if the result is weak and unfocused. If the SDP leadership had formed a band, it would sound like this.

A perplexingly bloated, often aimless album is both a head-scratcher and a true waste of potential.

Mr. Davis seems to pull in every direction at once. Gucci himself, despite the attempted show of a triumphant album, largely seems to feel somber.

Noveller has created a pretty, stretched, tasteful, insubstantial record.

A pleasant, but ultimately unspectacular adventure.

At its best, Antisocialites is a raw effort from a band who swears they've been around longer than they have, composing a handful of very good songs, with a majority of flukey, bored-out-of-my-fucking-mind songs that seem to drag one after the other. Alvvays' main flaw remains their lack of authenticity, a tragedy for a band with this much potential.

Unfortunately, aside from a couple of other stronger tracks (‘Gonna Get Better’ and ‘Towers and Masons’ – one of Brendan Canning’s contributions), the rest of the album isn’t something I have a desire to return to.

It is worth a listen but won't hang around in the memory for long, which is not what we've come to expect from a legend like this.

If you've already heard 2002's tenth-anniversary reissue of the group's debut album, Slanted and Enchanted, then you've already heard everything compiled here.

Lost Girls is fundamentally disappointing. It is an album devoid of originality from an artist who should be reaching for the stars instead of looking back into the murky past for inspiration. No doubt it will sell by the bucketload, but then people like Coldplay and voted in the Nazis so what do they know.

[FIDLAR] could potentially translate many of these songs into excellent bangers during concerts. But for now, Too is an irritating and frustrating disappointment.

You can’t listen to the music found here without dancing, which is a blessing and a curse. It’s fun at first, but eventually you’ll need a breather.

The production on the album is very shiny and polished, but at times far too cut and paste as every chorus seems to be layered with Sia's vocals, providing a backing falsetto.

Juice B Crypts is certainly a decent-enough math rock album, but when you have people as experienced and talented as Williams and Stanier “decent-enough” doesn’t cut it.

1989 is full of cliches, but the truth is that we wouldn't expect them to not be present anyway.

‘Unspoken History’ and ‘I Want U’ show she has real talent. With more work, and more pain, she might graduate from The Best of Luck Club.

It’s his weakest effort to date. His range of voices, from his familiar craggy baritone to a hesitant pitch-shifted falsetto (on ‘Echo’) are made to do all the heavy lifting because Dear the producer is too content with letting tracks spin their wheels and sputter to a halt.

Among the 21 tracks of Close It Quietly there is plenty that is amiable and whimsical, pleasant and inoffensive. There is also, however, almost nothing affecting or memorable.

So many tracks slip through your consciousness, particularly with how much he sticks to the formula of chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus. His dullness sucks the life out of typically energetic guests like Playboi Carti, whose feature is less Die Lit and more Diluted.

Doko Mien indeed falls short of the bands body of work but that doesn’t mean that every song on its own has something to offer. For the most part the group is still never derivative as their own unique spin is still apparent on every track. For the most part it is just too subtle to be noticed.

We know what these artists can do separately. We've even had a glimpse of what they can do together, and when held up to that (and I'm not going to pretend it doesn't hurt me to say this) Do It Again just doesn't stand up.

You can hear [that the songs were written very quickly]; the atmosphere across the album is very constant. However, it makes them very similar by the same standard.

Many Moons is the fussy, neat feeling we already know of him. The only real change is that we now have to look deeper and listen more closely to invoke a powerful connection between artist and listener. If the songs were more engaging, this would be easier to do. However, they all resolve to their same base parts, and thus become more forgettable than the feelings Real Estate's best songs have conjured.

Sometimes he lands on stanzas worth savoring (“All that I fear is that all that I have given you is a ship out to nowhere that wants to be out of control/but I see the light in oh so many things out here, and a lifetime so gently now sits on the stairs to my home.”) Other times, timelessness gives way to stuffiness, with lyrics that act more like riddles he doesn’t really care about solving (“When every wind is an afterlife out here, what language do you dream in when you’re drunk?”)

There are lovely moments on this album, but often they are repeated far too many times and for far too long; it's a fatal mishandling of what could be a lithe and catchy collection of electro-pop.

Though it definitely has its moments and manages to grapple with the horror of modernity there’s a split keeping this from feeling quite as cohesive as it should.

It's just a shame that these gems are surrounded by material that's just not as strong, or consistent as we've come to expect.

There's some great individual tracks here, but they need their next full-length to be less Jekyll and Hyde and more Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson.

While it is a solid, if unspectacular debut with promise for the future, it's difficult to fight the feeling that Before We Forgot How To Dream is an album which hides behind big production because it is afraid to be intimate.

White and Mosshart's collaboration feels like a tale of the proverbial nearly men--close, but no cigar.

Heads Up feels like an album bound to be forgotten.

Both the fact that this effectively represents a collaborative effort and also that there's three different singers across the album's twelve tracks are probably reasons behind the fact that it feels like a pretty diffuse collection of songs; the only real unifying characteristic to Hold It In's songs are their punishing level of loudness.

He and his brother have made an album that’s too impersonal to provide an actual emotional connection but also lacking the vision necessary to provide something out of this world.

Although it is by no means a bad record, it just represents the first time that he has lost the emotional power that has previously made him so much more than just a man with a guitar.

Overall, this is an album with fleeting moments of joy, but these are not sustained.

There was a sense of duty in pressing play on Luminous rather than an organic excitement or desire.

None of the songs here are particularly lengthy, but the way ideas evaporate almost instantaneously makes it a slog of an album. It doesn’t help that one-third of the tracklisting is made up of befuddling interludes, with only one (a reprise of another, no less) offering any intrigue thanks to some well-rendered telephone rings.

Perhaps the reason for the feeling of emptiness at the well-meaning heart of No One is Lost is in its striking over-familiarity.

It pains me to overly criticise an album that may be quite enjoyable if you were born in the '70s and have only ever looked forward for your music, but there's no avoiding this particular White Fence could have done with a second coat to better hide what's beneath.

There's nothing bold or groundbreaking about Let's Wrestle but it plays to its strengths. It's almost what you expect it to be, but not quite.

While calling Fishing For Fishies stale at first may be a bit harsh, it becomes pronounced once you consider the adventurous image King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has carved out for itself over the last five years. With this passive listening experience, rarely was I ever intrigued by the band’s songwriting.

At Best Cuckold is much like the autumnal vibe it tries to project in that, like autumn, you don't mind its existence but you kind of just want to go back to that excellent summer again.

Gleams and glances of Albarn’s potential are almost omnipresent, yet never really come into fruition.

In terms of the surface tones and textures, the tracks in question are interesting enough--pretty, even. The underlying structures that govern these tones and textures, however, don't allow for anything approaching the band's typical intensity.

This album is just a few puzzle pieces shy of being great, and that’s a damn shame.

Whilst it's certainly performed with skill and respect for the golden era of soul music, there's a sense that it's a bit too tightly controlled.

Mulberry Violence isn’t a letdown because it doesn’t live up to expectations of what a Trevor Powers album is supposed to sound like. It’s a letdown because an immensely talented and creative spirit is struggling to let his instincts speak for themselves.

The message behind the music is much more clichéd, and much less interesting.

This record’s three parts, separated by the gender of the narrator and little else, are muscular, repetitive, exhausting pieces of psych-math riffs that hardly let up. They make me feel like I’m stuck on an endless dancefloor, forced to nod my head into eternity.

This collection of tracks could be spunked on by a Joe Satriani-type noodle, and individually each member could break free and have their moment to shine, but instead they shun solos and move as unit, maintaining collective power and defiantly sticking to their modus operandi.

None of the tracks on New Material could fit any such textbook definition of "bad". It’s stylistically inconsistent and at times bafflingly chaotic, but each track has a certain quality that defines Preoccupations as a willingly evolutionary band.

Though undoubtedly a handsome package, the experience of Lease of Life as a whole feels somewhat insubstantial; its impact is elusive while any real staying power is negligible at best.

Standout tracks, melancholic interludes and stylistic jumpiness add elements of unpredictability to Everett and co. that they’ve sorely missed. But these same things also make it an overarching mess.

At the end of the day, an outtakes record only appeals to super-fans and aficionados. Cowboy Worship is an interesting look at the evolution of Amen Dunes, but it doesn't add much to their oeuvre.

Diamonds and company hold on to flimsy synth arpeggios and pop contrivances like a child would an old toy.