Different Gear, Still Speeding shows that the band is comfortable with themselves and their follow-up has every chance to be a stronger album – especially if they are brave enough to include more styles, even if they won't move beyond their British Invasion inspirations.

Chopped & Screwed is an interesting concept that would certainly be fascinating to witness live. However, on record, it does not reach more than a curiosity frequently enough to make it worth many repeat plays.

At heart, it’s all too modest, too fatigued, too lacking in ambition and attitude.

It’s far from a miserable affair, it certainly passes the time, it’s just hard to imagine how so much talent in a room didn’t arrive with something that didn’t feel so staid.

Despite the label hopping, the independent releases, the decade of time spent away, Wavves still hasn’t changed much.

The moments of brightness--some poetry here, a brief pop moment there--will get most listeners through the album, but won't inspire them to keep coming back.

As it stands, the rest of the record proves to varying degrees that it’s not necessarily reverb or effects that alienate--you can sound just as distant armed with nothing but clean instrumentation and an impenetrable air of disinterest.

Astronomy sounds like a healthy stroll down 90s Alternative Alley, and is as comforting as it is overly familiar; giving it a listen won't change your perspective on music, but it might make you pine for the good old days.

TEEN is another in a long line of mildly interesting but ponderous offshoots from already established bands.

As is, I Am Very Far is far from a lot of things, the biggest among these is the high bar that Okkervil River has never had a problem exceeding, until now.

Apart from the aptly titled "Film Credits," which, worthily, plays much like a ode to Max Richter, the music on the remainder of the album is left to unsatisfying and grey piano suites that don't sound destined for a more open setting nor benefit from the intimate setting of Arnalds' own living room.

Go With Me is like a big box of popcorn; it's tasty and it can be improved by the circumstances under which you're enjoying it, but by the end you're barely even tasting it anymore, and it certainly won't quell your appetite for a proper meal.

She’s basically incapable of making a song that isn’t at least pretty, but this album shows that some songs are simply meant to have more meat on the bone, and others are meant to be left out of the conversation altogether.

On paper, Horizons / East sounds like a return to form, but in the end, this is all miles from what Thrice were doing a decade ago. ... Thrice are going to have to try a little bit harder next time.

So much of Still Living is lost to completely monotonous-sounding songs, and while they are mixed impeccably and follow a certain rhythm, it's hard to get through the entire album in one sitting.

If you're hoping for change here, give up now. Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager is also presented in five acts, and again has no real structure to justify them.

Taylor takes that responsibility as a solo artist and runs with it, throwing everything and anything into the mix; there are the standard sounds you’d expect from him, but there’s also country, blues-based hard rock, punk and some rap-rock thrown in for good measure. And therein lies the issue with CMFT: rather than those disparate influences somehow mixing to become a whole, they’re left to stand on their own. The more you listen to CMFT, the more it comes across as ‘Corey Taylor does (insert genre here)’ rather than something cohesive.

The entire album seems either completely uninspired or absolutely rushed.

Songs like “Carpenter” and “Set the Fairlight” have some of that old-school Islands mentality, displaying Thorburn’s ability to write infectious grooves. But these moments are few and far between and easily overshadowed by the homogenous tones of “Natural Law Party” and the flighty “Marble”.

Time and time again The Luyas set themselves up in a soft kraut-like groove and fail to progress the song into something different, allowing it to fizzle out after four or five minutes.

The National Health is not a poor effort, it's just woefully undistinguished.

Ian Parton is capable of more, and his poor decisions and lack of forward-thinking will keep The Go! Team from being more than a great live act unless change is sought for their next record.

What remains is a record that feels all too groomed, all polished execution and often not well thought out. Music to nod and tap your foot along to, then turn it off and move on.

Based loosely around a theme of karma and betrayal, it’s possible that the attempt to tie everything together lyrically came at expense elsewhere. The sequencing doesn’t help: following the Lykke Li-ish opener “Love And Other Drugs” and nuclear trap of “WUACV” (which stands for “woke up and chose violence”) comes a Barbie pink, seven-song sampler of other peoples’ sounds. We don’t get to see Maidza again until the three bangers crammed into the back half, which is very late.

Unfortunately, after years of anticipation, the reveal is an overtly tedious shell of everything Parker has ever charmed into existence. In fact, tedious may be an understatement.

Its biggest problem is that, from start of finish, it feels strangely reserved.

The timbre or the texture of the sounds they make is worth noting while working through Smilewound, but hardly worth returning specifically for.

With their influences in the right musical zone, we could be hearing some great things from Jacuzzi Boys in the future. Sadly, this release proves that they're not quite there yet.

As brief as the moments of goodness may be, they’re lost in a sea of noise that becomes near indistinguishable when taken in one sitting.

It's an album that alternates between being rewarding and punishing.

There's potential here but it's sadly unrealized.

Pedestrian may have similar mechanics to Yuck’s highlights underneath, but it’s stripped that fuzzy distortion and slathered in a thick layer of schmaltz as a replacement. The end result is a struggle, one that’s scattershot due to it’s need to include now-ancient methods to survive.

The experimental mindset is evident in moments of Right Thoughts, but only a select few, and like Tonight, it’s most prominent on the last few tracks.

Monthly Friend is serviceable indie rock at best, but it’s hard to meet it with anything greater than apathy and indifference.

What works for Lambchop in the case of TRIP is the level of consistency in their sound that they were able to achieve through years of playing music together. However, it does not exactly bring the album together, because the tracks are thematically very different, and the band’s decision to apply the same approach to them contributes to the plainness of TRIP.

ATUM is the most controversial and strangest of all Smashing Pumpkins albums: a record that defies expectations but often disappoints in how prosaic and calculated it is.

The Wilderness isn't really a sum of its parts in that songs might sound okay, if not good on their own, but taken altogether it makes for an album that fails to make it off the ground.

Considering this is her first album since 2014, it’s unfortunate that it can feel a little one-note. A Romeo and Juliet-esque yearning wasn’t necessarily expected or desired, and it doesn’t always serve her best across this effort.

Beal appears determined to make his debut as inaccessible as possible. Intentionally crappy instrumentation holds the album back, stealing the focus from what is an incendiary voice--a lot of casual fans will be dumbfounded by this grating, uneasy listening.

It's shiny but fluffy, and sure to be a disappointment to those hoping that O'Regan could build on the promise of Special Affectations.

It sounds reaching, like the band is lost and looking desperately for an audience and a voice. I hope they start looking somewhere else.

Ákadóttir has made her own museum here, and each of the songs on the album are monochrome statues that we the listener get to walk around and view, but we leave the building indifferent to any real history and experience they represent. It’s like Night at the Museum, but without any of the magic.

It sounds like he's trying to sound less weird, when he doesn't seem to understand that this very weirdness is part of what made him so endearing as a solo artist in the first place.

As said, the songs benefit from being taken out of context and as much as that leads to just picking and choosing the moments worth going back for, the process of listening to the EP as a whole can almost be disheartening as much as it is unrewarding.

Maybe they don't care, but ultimately, without any variety or ingenuity on any future albums they might make next, Monotonix might be forever stuck in a rut with nothing to do but party hard.

They sound like too much like themselves and too much like the others, and even if you discount the pinpoint instrumentation, it's depressingly calculated.

There are occasions in the album's 45 minutes that are pretty good.

This collection of radiant jangle pop songs, burdened by nostalgic love and depressive yearning for something real, ultimately loses its luster. Everything else blends into one garbled, hazy murmur that ensues without much variance.

Sure, there is not a bad tune in the bunch, but the problem is that there isn't a particularly good one here, either.

While One Second of Love contains this personal touch of sound, it isn't used to potential.

Ultimately, Mylo Xyloto feels like a mixed bag of ideas that never really comes together.

Hopefully we'll hear something redeeming from Gonjasufi, because MU.ZZ.LE is a step in the wrong direction, or even worse, a step backwards.

At least in name, Heavy Rocks seems to promise a return to form for Boris. It isn't. It certainly manages a return to sludgy riffed-based heaviness, but the spirit of the record's orange prequel is nowhere to be found.

Banks is showing some desire to move beyond the design that his career has sustained itself on, but this album shows he's not quite ready to cut the cord.

With a collection of songs largely indistinguishable from one another, this album exemplifies the struggle up-and-coming rappers currently face.

With Feed The Beast she has neither progressed past that nor become a lost cause.

As compelling as their musicianship may be conceptually, it rarely goes the distance on Remembrance of Things to Come.

Unless you really enjoy music in commercials, you should avoid this disc.

We Must Become often hints at Joy Division's stylish brand of post-punk ennui, but by treating it as little more than a gimmick, Maus loses the urgency that makes Curtis's music so endurable.

Where There Existed an Addiction to Blood seemed to take the listener down a spiral of harsh violence and vaguely interconnected moments of supernatural terror, Visions of Bodies Being Burned just feels lost.

The textures are jagged and distorted, the lyrics are mostly nonsensical and feel spontaneously captured, and the whole thing sounds like an awkward genre-fusing experiment that doesn’t feel like it warrants its own noted release. That’s not to say there aren’t moments with elements to enjoy, if not just moments with potential.

Descriptors are hardly necessary for any of these songs because they're all a stone's toss from one another in pretty much every respect.

Lasers is more an indictment of the state of mainstream rap than anything. This is the absolute worst-case scenario of what can happen when commerce is placed above art, and in this instance it's especially offensive because Lupe is someone who doesn't need to bend over backward to be accessible.

All the talent in the world can't cover up the fact that Queen of the Wave simply tries too hard and succeeds too infrequently.

They need to find their identity, and they're going to have to move forward and progress even further as a group if they want to move beyond being a flavor of the month.

Garden Of Arms is a disappointment, but by no means a failure; next time Peter Wolf Crier need to not only focus on how to make interesting-sounding songs, but how best to execute them too.

There's nothing wrong with seeking to accomplish the same things your heroes did, but when a band tries only to imitate a few aspects–in this case, detached singing, jangly guitar interplay, and lyrics about teen angst–without offering many of the other aspects that made that band great–like clever storytelling and interesting perspectives--it's always going to fall short. Which Come Of Age does.

All signs of growth are forfeit in an attempt to mimic the simple appeal of the material that got him here, right down to the title of the album; another installment in the Famous series, simply with The Album tacked on.

For everyone else, the predictable melodic twists and some truly awful lyrics will likely prove too much to endure.

These are stories we've already heard told better, and in the same voices.

Cracker Island’s forgettable, milquetoast assembly line of tracks – though crisply and professionally engineered – proves that having it all shouldn’t always mean using it all.

There are enough moments here to suggest that the band can find a comfortable middle ground between the two sounds that will suit both their aspirations and the desire of the listeners, let's just hope that next time around they find it.

It gets repetitive after a while.

She enlists help from guest artists and DJs to encapsulate the past six years – but there’s no innovation or originality.

Unfortunately it's largely downhill from here [after opener "Silence"].

This album would not be selling or gaining attention if the band consisted of either of the aforementioned, proving that Share the Joy is nothing worth rejoicing.

Raven in the Grave isn't significantly weaker than any of it's predecessors, it's flaws are just significantly more obvious.

Everything that made their self-titled debut forgettable has been brought back and laboriously run into the ground.

There's a lot of kinda clichéd and heavy-handed stuff.

Detractors have long said that Harris’ music is tailor made for background summer playlists you can ignore – listening to this project, it’s hard to disagree.

What Did You Expect has its moments, albeit brief ones.

There is a disappointing flatness to the songwriting, the performances and the general drive of the record. It is the sound of a band going through the motions, scared to make much of a show of themselves for fear of making a mistake.

By draining the grunge and punk influences from their sound and then over-producing every single song, Lucero have effectively become every Southern rock, blues-inspired bar band you've ever heard.

When they really let themselves down is on the sappiest songs.

The Libertines, with their second comeback, have chosen the other, “safe” direction, and sacrificed their integrity for it. Doherty sounds tired, abandoning nostalgia for kitschy gestures. Barât has fun, putting on his old jacket and playing rockstar, but he’s not rethinking his role as musician, or portraying growth as a songwriter.

The result is an album that is still adrift at sea, unaware of the musical landscape around them.

The most disappointing aspect about Syd Tha Kid's delivery is her inability to create a remotely compelling protagonist - something Odd Future members have proved themselves more than capable of doing.

The Rapture show that they are as worthy of pupils as they have been for the last decade as teachers. But, unfortunately, they still have a lot to learn.

[The songs'] punchiness and repetitiveness can quickly get on one's nerves, depending on your disposition.

I'd say that MDNA is at the very least "not bad," but frankly, it's worse than bad: it's mediocre.

Van Weezer is the definition of a modern Weezer album: if you go in expecting it to be as dumb and forgettable as other recent Weezer albums, you’re going to get exactly that.

With some rather boring compositions and hokey songwriting, this record doesn't have a lot going for it.

Regardless, even the harshest of words are unlikely to stop this album from being a success. And that, well, is kind of depressing.

The songwriting here is just not very good. And even when the referential tracks are fairly decent, they only would have been minor entries of their era. Shades of Madonna and Avril can’t disguise that there’s no distinguished personality here.

The vast majority of Dark Lane could play in a suburban Baskin Robbins without offending a single soccer mom. Honestly, they’d be unlikely to even notice it was playing. The few songs that would have moms asking to speak to the manager – which are by and large the project’s better offerings – feel more cribbed from younger artists’ playbooks than ever for the Toronto king’s rapidly aging brand.

I Love You Dude is offensive in its banality, and other than that it's so mundane that it's tough to even want to care.

The whole thing comes off as either an expensive major label joke or nigh-impenetrable high art concept. Maybe both.

Future This is stuck in some kind of awful, awful limbo between Robert Smith-less Cure and hyperbolic electro dance music.