Caravan Château is undoubtedly a sonically interesting album to partake in. But Izenberg’s compositions don’t always lend him any favours. They are considered, and everything feels deliberate (despite how sporadic it may be presented to be), but sometimes they don’t wander in any direction that makes for engaging listening.

On Gimme Some, Peter Bjorn and John abandon the experimental sound they'd been developing over the course of the last few years in favor of flavorless alt-rock that falls short of the bar set by Falling Out.

By itself, Mountaintops is a big, dry album that doesn't move you anywhere.

If anything, A Very She & Him Christmas can feel like a wet blanket at times, like a party that just can't get off the ground.

Poster Girl is a step forward in a somewhat more concise direction for Larsson, but it could have used some fine-tuning to fully commit to its vision. She has created an album that is unapologetically romantic and fun but lacking in consistency production-wise.

Instead of charm you've got big dramatic gestures at every turn.

To put it simply, Is This Hyperreal? suffers not because the band made a bad album, but because this is the fourth time they've repeated the formula.

It remains a frustrating record, though, since it does show Tegan and Sara attempting to pull away, ever so slightly, from the sickeningly shiny days of “Closer”, but they get in their own way in their efforts to be edgy or forward-thinking.

Judging from these recordings, it’s unclear where Secret Machines are heading. Their strength lies in dynamic live shows, and those are postponed until further notice. Awake in the Brain Chamber possesses the clean-cut sound of a mainstream rock album that can sell large quantities, but it lacks the wild abandon and unique inspiration that leads to fervent adoration – the qualities that made their debut album into an underdog classic of the era. But the potential remains.

To his credit, he once again proves why he’s esteemed at the former via the blunt insights of “TMVTL”, but the “run that verse back” Benny is all but absent on Everybody Can’t Go. Once more, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but he doesn’t seem sure how to replace that energy with conviction. Even The Alchemist gets dragged down by the pursuit of safe material.

God Forgives is consistently, pleasantly underwhelming: the plodding R&B-rooted efforts aside, there's nothing much to complain about.

It gets bogged down in the doldrums somewhere between the personal and universal, and ends without truly having reached either shore.

The record sounds tired, dreamy, and wasted in the daylight at five in the afternoon– it tries to be breezy, but instead still feels like 99 degrees of heat.

For those who regard May Our Chambers Be Full as a contemporary gem, The Helm of Sorrow will occur as one of rock’s anticlimaxes. One shouldn’t ignore the winning elements of this release and how the contributing artists’ gifts are alternately put on center stage, but if Chambers is the benchmark for this combo, then one has to point out that what rendered it near-perfect; namely, the seamless synthesis of styles and energies, is on the whole absent here.

The tracks are still unmistakably Sonic Youth, but in a period where each album had a particular feel and tone, these tracks feel too disjointed to sit together too well.

The most frustrating thing about these eleven songs is that it sounds as if Lidell is shackled by the aesthetic, and it’s totally self-imposed. He’s capable of more.

While Major has a good solid handful of inspired moments, none of this material comes close to approaching the plane as that Fang Island were operating on before.

They start off well, though, with a trio of solid tracks.... The remaining tracks on the album are equally inoffensive, but they don't have the same half-minded unassuming appeal to help them glide along, and too often there's one too many head-in-your-hands cheesy lines thrown in.

Surprising title be damned, High Off Life can’t seem to help feeling like a rerun – albeit an enjoyable one.

What hurts The Don Of Diamond Dreams is how they get ahead of themselves with minimal regard to where they’re going.

Junior Boys’ track record shows that change is good, but here it feels like the tiptoe before a more significant step.

Sticking to a playbook can be a great approach, but Diet Cig seem to be always aiming for “proficient”, while the “exemplary” boxes languish unchecked.

If Wilson and crew are trying to invoke a riot, then Easy Eighth isn’t the best manifesto – but it does at least fill the time fine enough until they figure out their cause.

Like Silica Gel, Sushi isn't a bad album; it's just disappointingly mediocre, and I expect better than that from the psychedelic underground's clown prince of Cool Runnings and backseat-of-grandma's-Oldsmobile Top-40 jams.

Toward the Low Sun staggers to get that momentum, though it does achieve atonement through progression.

Local Business isn't a bad album, but it doesn't completely pull itself off either.

Nocturnes rates better as an album that sounds better with time, as opposed to Hands’ sugar rush appeal. However, it also retains an uneven quality that can make getting through Nocturnes feel like someone trying to drag the party on a little too long.

As an album, it's ultimately too bogged down by its professionalism and erraticism to come together very well.