Despite these vigorous moments, too often The Winter Of Mixed Drinks falls prey to indistinguishable mid-tempo material.

So much of listening to Ardipithecus feels immeasurable by good or bad. Ardipithecus fails as a pop record, because it’s barely aware that it’s a part of that conversation.

Contra isn't really that bad, yet it's also not nearly sturdy enough to maintain the puppy-love, Obama-esque crush many of us have had on them.

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.

Expektoration offers a strong tracklist, heavy with fan favorites (opener "Hoe Cakes," "Accordion," "Rhymes Like Dimes") and peppered with rarities ("People Places & Things," "Change the Beat"), but it's not the type of strength you can't feel from going back to the originals.

In a word, Gloss Drop just sounds confused, and its structures don't challenge or excite.

[The songs] may be executed with prowess, but their bandied crassness isn't just a tried-and-true style, it's a tiresome cliché.

Religious Knives’ latest recording doesn’t implore repeat listens the way "Resin" did and still does.

There’s something to be said for two masters of their craft talking jazz for the joy of it, but to me, the question remains whether or not this kind of jazz is played out.

As Damaged Bug, John Dwyer exposes new horror, though perhaps that’s not quite it. Perhaps horror is hyperbolic. Perhaps as Damaged Bug, Dwyer exposes anxiety as ambience. Inescapable static.

For Art Brut vs. Satan, the band didn’t need Frank Black to give them an edge; they needed a mentor to help them focus on their real message: changing the musical landscape. Satan may have won this round, but don’t count out Art Brut. Not just yet.

If Belle and Sebastian appear to be repeating themselves here, maybe that just means there's another minor reinvention coming somewhere down the line.

This album is no disaster, no Moonbeams and Bluejeans, but the benign flatness here suggests the ineffable whatever that made The Fall fascinating has fallen away, and it looks very far gone.

Wilco (The Album) isn’t a failure--not by any means--but when a band has become so attached to the notion of change and then stagnates, it casts a heavy shadow that’s hard to escape.

Two Trains could be pared down to a gorgeous EP.

Even though songs like the jittering “444Sure” teem with propulsive energy and dynamic peaks, they lack the inventiveness and originality to induce euphoria in any other way, and thus they descend into commonplaces and banalities.

It’s fairer to say that this album fails me because these 12 tracks are simply not interesting enough, especially for a band that was always so visceral and engaging.

Some Sweet Relief’s beauty starts to wear kind of thin on repeated listening.

Lambchop show glimmers of invention, and if these were pursued more and the quality control was stricter, one very good album could be the result. [combined review of both discs]

In total, it sort of feels like Campbell and Lanegan want to be on the balcony and in the party at the same time, and so succeed at neither.

A mild sense of self-congratulation permeates the record, as if the attempt to synthesize several disparate elements together is somehow as admirable as that synthesis itself.

I think it’s safe to say that this third Volume remains the most autobiographical of the bunch.

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.

Like all things retro, Faunts find themselves stuck between nostalgia and total recall, unable to determine the criticality of their appropriation.

While End of Daze features some of Dum Dum Girls' more sophisticated songwriting to date, there is an overwhelming shadow of certainty and safety that is cast over the EP, preventing it from being a truly singular musical experience.

Despite occasional flourishes, Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy is an average set by a band who should be far beyond releasing anything less than stellar.

All the riffs, drums, and lyrics seem to struggle against the current of a constant drone, with odd sounds bubbling out of the muddy puddle, yet remaining stagnant, as it were. There is nothing remarkable or striking about this mirror’s explosion.

His good intentions are largely undone by the occasional ideological confusion. The enjoyment offered by the instrumentation is unmitigated, however, which ultimately makes Li(f)e something of a positive-sum venture.