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.

The only way you can't approach Best of Gloucester County is neutrally. And it takes suspendin' some serious disbelief to buy into the Danielson vision, but I think it's worth it.

Collaboratively, then, You, Whom I Have Always Hated makes for a solid metal album, but the attribute that gives it an edge works also as a reminder as to just how imaginative this collaboration could be the next time around.

SZA remains a captivating, interesting singer, but the focused singularity that made S such a rewarding listen is largely absent here.

Atomos is, to my ears, a more uneven offering than the debut, lacking the gem-like balance of its predecessor. The upside is that Atomos is perhaps a more challenging listen, featuring a broader sonic palette that contains more distinct highs and lows, both of mood and of merit.

With minimalism, especially of this improvised sort, if you don't like it, give it another listen; and if you still don't like it, ok.

Aside from these conceptual assertions that it evokes, Feed the Animals is a good record. Though it’s broken up into 14 tracks, it functions best (and as Girl Talk intends) as a single 53-minute mash-up.

With Ume’s sweet, soft melodies mixed so gracefully with their bone-crushing riffs, any notion of contradiction between the two are dispelled.

Oftentimes she’s content to let one spidery riff circle the drain endlessly (“Quicksand”) and more than once she goes completely a cappella, an effect that would normally lend an album a sense of intimacy, but I Abused Animal seems resistant to emotional refuge.

Because the album can’t be one complete thing, Age Of is its own archenemy; its own princess stranded in a high castle; its own climb up the Holy Mountain. A radical incompleteness haunts it.

They’ve left the cutting edge musically, which can have valuable results, but here it feels ambivalent and a little tidy.

I'd like to say Automato is an album worth slobbering over, but it's not.

It creates an illusion of depth, and its intervention is interesting, rather than distracting. It thickens space and imagines worlds that once were.

On the whole, Imitation is self-consciously danceable and overconfidently messy. It’s restless music for restless people, and while it entertains plenty for stretches, it doesn’t quite hold the focus that a 40-minute collection of songs demands.

Nadler's shortest and sparsest full-length yet. The decision to limit it to little more than a handful of tracks ensures it's succinct and absent of any songs I could comfortably call 'bad' or even 'not good,' but it also means there's no room for any of the risks that made her older work so fresh and adventurous.

This is cinematic music, fitting a noir mode.

The melodies don’t propel; they put buffers and stopgaps between other moments of intense sound design. Like a luxury car at a car show, they exude and ooze sleekness and velocity. But hidden within that is a terror: the terror of being surveilled, minute by minute, devoid of ontological access to the eternal or the metaphysical.

Here, obsessed with his own mortality, Conor isolates himself from what stirs his best writing.

Even at her poppiest here, this is still chunky, dissonant, and dense.

For a record seeking personal elevation via uncontainable energy, The Glowing Man doesn’t always glow often or energetically enough to help its listeners realize that it’s trying to attain such elevation.

Unfortunately, The Pretty Toney Album falls short in replacing what Raekwon had contributed to Ghost's previous album releases, causing the album to feel essentially incomplete.

At its core, Total Life Forever is a good dance record: something you could leave on at a party and not stop moving to until its full 50 minutes have finished. But as much as it tries to run away from that, it isn't a whole lot else.

There are a number of mediocre ideas that are drawn out a bit too long.

This lack of identity admittedly fuels the indecipherable, entrancing mystery of the album, yet unfortunately this strength also equates to the album’s primary weakness.

The pioneering hardiness Faun Fables capably venerates is now the domain of reenactors. The intrepid few who still seek frontiers have only the vaster dark of dreams to explore.

Votolato has a lot to offer as a musician, but his songwriting veers into stale territory too often over the course of 12 songs, neglecting to pull itself from its many holding patterns in time for salvation.

Pared down and stripped to its primal rudiments, the latest Timberlake saga could have been something truly epic; instead, it just feels unnecessarily immense.

The laid-back feel of White Van Music ultimately hinders it from being a truly creative and distinct work.