The album has more than its share of bangers and certainly beats last December’s leftovers casserole More Fish on the killer-to-filler ratio, but Ghost veers too close for comfort to the feel of his worst albums

Object 47 is not a horrible record; it just isn’t all that good. It has none of the flare found on the band’s trilogy of classics and is never quite able to free itself from not-so-desirable labels like bland and unchallenging.

Food is another sad testament to how the squares have won and how we’re all likely to capitulate at one point or another to the dictates of the majority.

Pain has the audacity to come correct, while so many 90s miners are content to approximate. They place themselves in the pantheon and let the gatekeepers of dubious to imperious distinction do what they will.

Many of these songs begin promisingly before losing momentum and settling into turgid grooves. Rather than serving as a platform for D∆WN and Machinedrum to hybridize and expand the pop form, Redemption offers ornate, glittering garments, which constrict as they envelop.

Undercard tastes like diluted Darnielle. Nonetheless, there's enough gold buried here to recommend it, even if it's not strictly canonical by my personal reckoning.

The songwriting of its back-half just doesn’t stand up to its front-half or the rest of the band’s catalog.

There isn’t a single moment on EWBAITE when I wasn’t second guessing my feelings, and that makes it interesting to me, if not necessarily as interesting as some of their other post-reunion records.

The Clearing is nothing if not the sound of a band discovering a new home, musically, emotionally, and physically. The sound is far bigger than either of the previous fingerpicking-heavy records.

NewVillager have the potential to expertly toe the line between unkempt ambition and childlike fascination, and bridge this unfortunately large gap between big ideas and big audiences in the process. They just aren't quite there yet.

As Hookworms gain more confidence and their heady rhythms are spread further afield, hopes remain that future material might be slightly less veiled.

As welcome as this debut was at the time, and as arguably relevant as its topoi of absence and alienation are to us all, there’s something very disquieting about a band that, four albums later, is obstinately continuing to mine its somber wellsprings.

Antisocialites may not be a manifest step forward for Alvvays. Quieter than its predecessor on many of the songs, the album sacrifices immediacy for Rankin’s occasionally mawkish but otherwise astute poetics. But the tradeoff is worth it.

Despite its conceptualist sonics and firmly placid surface, Nothing still winds up as Kode9’s most unsettling and miserablist release to date, as well as his most emotionally resonant and straightforward.

It’s utterly consistent, simply arranged, and scrolls through the bad ideas fast enough to make them forgivable.

Happiness In Magazines is one of the best garage rock hybrids to have been released since The Strokes hit it big.

With its blend of classic Jurado themes and a new sonic palette, Saint Bartlett serves not just as an encapsulation of Jurado's career, but as a promising indicator of where he's headed.

All of a sudden, the hooks sink deeper; the simple solos, redolent of Pavement/Malkmus to the axe-max, sound better; and, most of all, the songwriting is muscular.

Certainly, Tomboy, recorded in a dark basement in sun-soaked Lisbon, delivers its fair share of primal pleasures and sacred ecstasies.

Say Yes to Love is a potently wrought 22 minutes of febrile noise-punk that contains enough in the way of hook and subtle invention amidst its familiar battery to stand up on its own feet.

More than one track goes on about how love will eventually get us to heaven and such, and the sickly, sugary sweetness of it all just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

There is nothing new for the listener.

The prettier recording wraps up songwriting that seems perfunctory and performances that sound tired by comparison to the psychedelic dervishes Woods first appeared as.

Here, then, are 10 more steps on the path, 10 more keys in the song of life and death.

Nigel's production and arrangements leave very little room for the songs to breathe... However, the emphasis on Thom's lyrics illuminates The Eraser's strongest asset: its content.

They are pros, the best at what they do, but this is running on empty.

Despite looking to set the world on fire with Free TC, his debut, Dolla $ign spreads himself too thin and mostly stumbles over his own lofty ambitions.

Its total lack of affectation is the album's biggest problem. It feels like it's sequenced to fit some expectation of what types of songs an album should have.