When Smith gets a little feistier (his last resort), the songs feel more ambitious; but it’s the more minimal, quiet ones that hit home emotionally.

Decimation Blues has undeniably strong songs on the more experimental end of the spectrum and undeniably strong songs on the folky end of the spectrum. However, their placement together on one album (alongside a number of less successful songs) results in an extremely uneven listening experience.

The album, however, cannot shake off the feeling that it's a melting pot of Segall's previous albums from this year.

Overall though, there’s more comfort than debauchery on Alvvays.

Spiritual-Mental-Physical is occasionally slight, and there are fewer developed ideas than a real album release; for every punk etching on the wall, there is an aimless jam that was undoubtedly more fun to play than listen to.

Despite its inconsistencies, La Liberacion undoubtedly mixes it up.

You may find yourself cringing along to these missteps, but the album also a pretty fair split between between good and bad.

Despite V’s evidence of growth and energy throughout the first half of the album, excitement drains during the latter half. Kastlander’s vocals are still emotionally pinpricking on each song, consistently dwelling on the subject matter of relationship/post-relationship difficulties on tracks like Full and Be Here Now. Eventually though, just like hearing a friend complain about their ex for three months straight after the split, it gets tiresome.

Dedication, while a great exercise in atmosphere, doesn't get anywhere past where it started. It begins in gloom and minimal electronics, remains there-hell, it wallows there-and finishes off its life there.

Still branded with his punchy, pop-punk melodies, as well as venturing back to the fuzzier roots in several instances, the real issue with Afraid Of Heights is a lack of constraint.

Forming an identity is a difficult task, and Reasons To Live is honest about the painful and revelatory nature of that process.

While the band’s return to its gruffer roots on Desperate Ground has its redeeming qualities, the reliance on pop-punk catchiness feels like a crutch.

It seems like in each song Wiley is talking about a million different things all at once, but there's always the possibility that it's totally focused and you're just not keeping up. It's hard to tell.

After so much rapid reinvention, he’s found himself stalled in the middle of a transformation. In his constant quest to learn new tricks, he’s only ended up chasing his tail.

At every turn and every track the album is pushing up the RPMs to the point the engine begins to whine, smoke and threaten to explode.

Ab-Soul puts out a solid release here, helped along by some big name features and big performances from his TDE labelmates, but at times These Days feels too generic or just flat out stale, ultimately failing to carry the Black Hippy torch in the ways that good kid m.A.A.d city and Oxymoron did for the crew.

Even though Because The Internet is kind of strange and kind of a bummer, it does show Glover’s range as a musician.

So this is the real Temper Trap: less fuzz, more grit.

It’s equally as innovative as it is mundane, equally as ambitious as it is safe, and equally as fun as it is tedious. Well, the last one isn’t quite true, this album is a ton of fun.

If this album were condensed into an EP, it would be great, but as an LP, the Aussies seem to be stretching the good stuff too thin.

There’s no doubt that Royal Bangs are fully capable of splicing a broader set of influences into their quixotic mix, and Brass offers several great glimpses into a sonic evolution in progress. It’s just a shame that the metamorphosis isn’t quite complete.

On Skying, the group has definitely matured, jettisoning much of the divisiveness that marked its brash origins, but it feels like some of the edginess that first made the Horrors notable might've been discarded with it.

While D is undoubtedly a grower, it's unfortunate that White Denim's experimental tendencies don't always lend themselves equally well to good songs.

On this album, it feels like she had been groping for some sense of direction after an exhaustive smackdown. And she decidedly chose the feminine end of her musical ying-yang, opting for quiet, confounding introspection.

If the album has a significant weakness, it's that despite the impressive attention to detail and the impeccable production work, the record can't quite shake that side-project feeling.

What results is a satisfying but somewhat uneven listening experience.

On the whole, there is a lack of connection that makes it hard to qualify Synthetica as an entirely memorable album.

Those with some patience will eventually get a smattering of the heavy, grainy goods on This Song Is Over, Warble Womb‘s tellingly penultimate track. This certainly doesn’t make the album a wash--the swampy tunes are still fairly enjoyable. But it does change the formula for the band.