Its problems arise not out of any dearth of talent or skill, but out of its unfiltered sincerity and relentless positivity--qualities that are hardly problematic in themselves.

Unfortunately, the inspiration and vivid imagery don’t sustain, leaving you stuck in the middle of a boring anecdote.

Gallery is an effort by a young artist who stylistically manages to be consistent yet not sophisticated, involving yet not affecting.

The only downfall to Sahara Hotnights evolutionary sound is its middle-of-the-road attributes.

[A] gleaming, polished gem.

There's nothing inherently wrong about writing songs about enjoying booze and drugs, but this isn't something I'd put on under the influence of either. Just imagine what it sounds like sober.

It maintains the headstock-nodding guitar work, the coherence between players, and the alternating structure, but it winds down the pace and pokes some air holes in the top of their sound.

Linkin Park’s The Hunting Party is a difficult, painful, rarely rewarding album.

Save for the one glaring misstep, Punctuated Equilibrium doesn’t disappoint.

It's the fact that the album emerges from these lacunae, between mainstream electro-pop and DIY indie, between declaration and uncertainty, between contemporary knowingness and a complete lack of irony, that imparts its own imperfect je ne sais quoi--and, paradoxically, the hooks don't hurt.

The shallow cynicism and apathy that animates so many of its songs are under-interrogated by its writers, instead finding form as a pessimist’s non-committal, inconclusive pouting.

A few forgettable collaborations and sing-by-number hooks aside (the usually spirited Seu Jorge sounds especially enervated on “Favela Love,” which languishes until a jaunty guitar riff revives it well after the four-minute mark), many of the guest verses on the record pleasantly surprise.

Sex Change will please both their fans and newcomers; in fact it might be one of the best intros to their work so far.

Sex with an X is a clear case of The Vaselines boldly going where they have gone before - most of the record more than stands up to many of the nuggets in their tiny back catalog - but maybe that's okay; maybe it's better to have them as they were than to not have them at all.

Wildlife is nothing more than an album that sounds fine in the background--even at a volume you couldn’t help but pay attention to--yet ultimately fails to make any kind of memorable impression.

It’s definitely an improvement over "Happy Hollow," but the band has yet to reclaim the impulse that attracted so many of their fans in the first place.

The Cave Singers, though hobbled by their overly-familiar nature, make sweet, sentimental music. Welcome Joy, despite its rockier bent, is no exception.

The Perishers' second full-length album is, well, rather bland.

Skip the first track and Greedy Baby is a welcome addition to the Plaid catalogue, though not nearly as essential as their earlier works.

On The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z, for arguably the first time in his career, sounds tired and old; too tired and too old to create a new blueprint, but not to create a third copy; too tired and too old to create new styles and ideas, but not to regurgitate them; too tired and too old to tell a new story, but not to tell an old story of a time when swagga belonged to the gods, one in particular.

Transfixiation’s weakest points are its fixations, when it lingers too long on a verse clearly aching for the payoff of a chorus or when it tries for serious by way of obscene.

There’s No 666 will challenge you as much as anything you’ve heard in the last year, in both good ways and bad.

One doesn’t listen to these songs waiting for these moments; one listens to the album knowing full well that it will consistently wrestle with one’s grip. That’s the contract listeners face, and I’m not surprised some people don’t buy into it, but for those sticking to earth, % is teeming with more rewards and audacious invention than virtually any other debut 2010’s seen so far.

Whether or not one enjoys Presidence depends largely on whether this practice resonates; and resonance is a highly contingent, subjective process. However, if you do manage to hum along at their frequency and wavelength, you are in for one of the longest, strangest, most well-documented trips in the contemporary indie scene.

A flimsy and disposable album.

The initial mystique of The Weeknd is gone, and we’re now confronted with the work of a young man who possesses an impressive voice, an incredible ear for production, and a complete lack of purpose in his confrontational, intensely graphic lyrical obsessions.

Two Trains could be pared down to a gorgeous EP.

The dichotomy between the agonies of face-melting and beatific singing has long been a Pterodactyl motif, but this time the guitar wizardry takes a nonetheless threatening backseat to the structure of the songs.

Even if there are more than a few moments on Drink More Water 6 that feel like obligatory retreads, there’s a lot to be said for iLoveMakonnen’s sheer charisma and for the immensely unique voice that he flaunts here more effortlessly than ever.

Something in the air of the hoary label worked obscurely on his imagination.

Sam capably fills the role of providing a shamanic base for the couple's creepy pounding rage, as well as a human touch to play along with the steady pump of the traveling drum machine.

He spends the whole record cooing and coaxing a series of barely-described lovers, but it’s never clear whether they’re real, imagined, or an idealized online version of the two.

While I would put this work near the bottom among Patton's opus, there are still some definitely enjoyable songs.

For the most part, there is little here to take offense to.

Most will find this album unnecessary, even if it's not entirely inconsequential.

Birds’s stripped-down approach bares an utter lack of finesse behind a microphone.

While the album can aptly be termed “good,” it isn’t the epic that many might expect, especially to those whose interests have long since shifted away from GN’R’s aesthetic and the younger generation unable to emotionally connect with the sounds.

Mild as it might be, Mixed Race is a solid effort from someone who insists on sticking around.

True, Money Mark has a typical singer-songwriter vocal presence, but lighthearted lyrics sprinkled with clever one-liners here and there do a sufficient job.

While this release is ruminative in nature, the temperament isn’t far removed from the classic record with which this release shares a striking visual resemblance.

Ironically, the general listening population--if they’re paying attention at all; hey, there’s a chance!--will find this to be Mercer’s most accessible, enjoyable work to date.

The songs on This Is Another Life are so well written, so finely paced, and so relatable in the sentiments and predicaments they weave together, there’s little justification in chiding the album for not making it patently clear that art alone doesn’t redeem misfortune and anguish.

So while Penny Sparkle might constitute yet another step forward on the band's musical journey, it's not one that I feel compelled to follow them on.

Putnam doesn't seem to be striving for something new, and if a new lineup isn't shaking up the formula, it’s likely that the music community shouldn't expect something new either.

With his inoffensive voice and inoffensive beats (surprisingly so, considering their producers), Bodan does, if only for a brief time, achieve something exciting and intimat

Other groups have approached the issue of originality by genre-blending; but in the case of Esben and the Witch, it is their very faith that ensures that the hollowness one feels while listening has a doubled quality, reflected not only in content but also in experience, leaving one with the ominous aftertaste of a doppelgänger encounter.

As enjoyable as it can be, Telekinesis! is only good enough to make you wish it were better.

Maybe Now or Heaven isn’t an awful record, but it’s certainly one that strips away everything I felt was compelling about the band to begin with.

It’s mostly enjoyable on a surface level or if you’re in the right mood (or under the right influence), but it doesn’t beg repeated listens.

Hello Everything is his most disappointing release yet.

It's a complicated exercise in postmodernism, and one that is surprisingly rich.

The resulting record plays like a soundtrack to a non-existent film, skeleton-framed and dramatic.

The Big Dream is but a pretty stone that withers the moment it is touched, lifted for further inspection.

Church Gone Wild/Chirpin Hard may not be exactly groundbreaking or revolutionary, but it's the kind of idiosyncratic release that reminds experimentalism to laugh when something's funny.

While I'm certain that this mode will suit Moore in his future indie folk material that is sure to come, In the Cool of the Day naturally goes from inoffensive to mildly irritating fairly quickly through repeated spins.

In the same way Radiohead took an impeccable album like OK Computer and stepped into unfamiliar territory with Kid A, Liars have sidestepped the majority of their familiar styles and broken free towards new explorations.

For a few glorious moments, our beloved Mancs have that swagger back.

Musically, there are too many things going on and too few things going on. Every track sounds more or less the same, and every track sounds like a poor heyday tribute.

A supernal set of tracks ends Preparations, movements of pure reverie that complete the album in fitting fashion.

This is yet another album destined to become background music in a trendy clothing boutique. Sadly, I have a feeling it'll have more than one Concretes record there to keep it company.

Despite what they’d like us to think, The Red Album sounds like every one of Weezer’s misfires since "The Green Album": a few songs that work and a whole slew that flounder completely.

For being as spare as it is, Zomes’ music is incredibly full while maintaining a hazy, idealistic distance.

Outta Sound shows a passionate and maturing George Evelyn that still had much to offer.

There is too much focus (or carelessness, perhaps) on his herky-jerky flows that match drum for drum, and the simple rhymes and tired messages are pathetic.

Climate Change is an album about nothing. It hears nothing, speaks nothing, and sees nothing. It could be about partying, but even that subject is given such perfunctory treatment that what’s left hardly rewards participation.

While Fluorescence may be an enjoyable record, it's certainly not a remarkable one. Hannah and Chikudate are adept at digesting diverse influences and turning them into an album that's pleasing to the ear, but few would consider it essential.

Paradise is the best attempt (yet) to cohere a deeply incoherent artist.

If one stripped away the halcyon, indistinct haze and the open-road aesthetic it furthers, you’d be left with precious little, save 10 unobtrusive, well-executed sleep aids. New Universe is its archetype--nothing more, nothing less.

Is Frauhaus! a groundbreaking musical statement? Absolutely not. Is it in the spirit of great, similarly-minded albums from contemporaries past and present? Resoundingly, yes.

This is pop music reinventing itself, reasserting its autonomy. Vroom Vroom offers a brief, appealing glimpse of a world manifest with characters, ideas, and feelings, all presented with a novel exposition.

Some tracks are stunning, others pass by unnoticed. The fact that we have them is beautiful enough. The chaos swallows you up.

The Teenagers have not made a great album, but it is better than many will want to admit.

This album is so soaked in self-pity that a track called "Madness" seems like a given. "Stone Froze Mascot" is a bad metaphor in and of itself - more self-pity, more of the same. Sound-wise, the album could use work, too.

At its best, when Bozulich is not just casting the spells, but stirring herself into the brew, In Animal Tongue ranks among the most provocative work she's done in recent years.

Tending toward minimalism as opposed to shock musical tactics, Cosmin TRG doesn’t thrill with throat-grabbing statements, but of course that is far from his intention.

Where The Messengers Meet subverts all the imagery suggested by the group's very name. It implies something incendiary, something rebellious, something explosive. And though there's evidence of a knowledge of all those things in the record's landscape, the path it takes proves a safer one, a trip to be had in good company.

ye really does what a self-titled album should do: it says “Hey, this is who I am.” Even at 23 minutes, it almost feels like two different albums: an aggressive, dissonant one, and an empathetic, soulful one. Yet, those aren’t the two sides of Kanye, because those things exist in him simultaneously, all the time.

Katy B’s stultifying lyrics, paired with an EMI-sponsored coterie of established DJs, producers, and vocalists, surgically selected as if delegates of their respective niches, evince only the sound of the culture industry at work.

Replacing the kitschy DIY aesthetic with intentional roughness and bloating each nook and cranny with some sort of sound, what’s emphasized is its production, not its songwriting.... At the same time, however, it’s the production that makes the album somewhat interesting.

The album tries really hard to be the soundtrack to both your trip to the disco and your trip down the rabbit hole, but doesn't offer any particularly compelling reasons for why you should make it either.

You can’t hear The Feeling in his voice, which is still one of the most infectiously beautiful in the industry, because as his faith has saved him from his pain, his production team has saved his voice from Justin. It makes for a series of unbeatable mainstream and crossover singles, and a desensitized, unnerving album.

As is, Teenage Emotions reads more like that freshman-year college paper you really wish you’d just deleted off your hard drive.

The absence of transportation and deliverance is ultimately what enables Recurring Dream to realize its pessimistic vision of the confused mechanisms we use to delude ourselves into thinking all is well, and despite its conceptually-necessitated limitations, the album is not short of moments of resonance and emotional impact.

RJD2 is still in a class of his own, and The Colossus is charming enough. Krohn might have temporarily given up on expanding his stylistic horizons, but he sounds comfortable again, certainly a small step taken toward a more fortunate future.

All The Way is quite good; let’s hope Growing defy their album’s title and live up to their own name by pursuing their clever ideas even further on their next release.

The blandest rock n' roll record possible.

Mistake may be a solid, somewhat complex electronic music release, but its nerdy precision has the tendency to render the melancholic, brooding melodies somewhat impotent.

An exhilarating listen.

Revolutions is an extremely boring affair, never building any momentum from the start to finish.

Drift is a step up from Devil’s Music (2016), which attempted to recreate Leave Home’s career-making abrasion with little of its viscerality. On the other hand, with nearly every song on the album performed in a different style, Drift lacks the cohesion of The Men’s less acclaimed albums.

The sound of Stigmata is grayed and stale--reaching, perhaps, for 18th-century Baroque, but instead winding up stuck in a rusty soundcard from 1998.

It continues to be true that instrumental synth of this caliber is a perfect backdrop, but today it gives the impression of digital trompe-l’œil, a backdrop devoid of foreground, a Real Hero as crash test dummy.

A slightly boring rock frontman adopts a pseudonym to make a solo album, and it sounds like his main band, recorded in a just-passable studio.

Schmaltziness is the only real pitfall here.

A real slog to get through.

So let's put it simply: With Recovery, Eminem has misunderstood everything that once made him great as thoroughly as anyone else ever has.

The collages he’s created are undoubtedly lovely, but as they stand, the songs sound more like attractive opportunities for great musicality than confident realizations of it.