On a practical level, High Country is a decade-old band trying out different material. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

If there’s one knock against Santana IV, it’s that it might be a little too overstuffed, with a tendency to occasionally wander into the realm of the self-indulgent.

Perhaps treasures will be revealed when we apply the deep, close attention Perkins requests. But not enough breadcrumbs are strewn along the path to encourage the search.

It’s an album you can approach and recognize even if you haven’t kept up with the recent catalog, but it might not set your heart alight.

Rave Tapes sees Mogwai doing what they do best in the way they’ve always done it. For better or worse, this is archetypical Mogwai.

C.O.C. stuck to their guns at the beginning of the decade, and now they’ve got a more formidable arsenal behind them. If there’s something they could learn from their Animosity days, though, it would be keeping a slim track list.

Range Anxiety is an album of endearing earnestness and jangly charm, and it will stand on your doorstep asking to come inside and chill for a while.

Though the two men may feel that this is the most personal album yet, musically, Meteorites sounds more like Echo & the Bunnymen without its whimsy.

Inventions is another mood-friendly collection of ambient works that never impresses too hard upon your feelings.

The album’s weaknesses aren’t unforgivable; they just too frequently sound limp and over-saturated in storied traditions. The verve and unpredictability that so frequently fueled her songs are lost and sorely missed.

It’s political without being overt, the production is strikingly heavy, and the good tracks outweigh the bad. At this point in his career, it’s as strong an album as anyone can expect from Mustaine and his revolving door of performers and should pull Megadeth out of has-been status.

Mostly, it feels like The Lumineers are talented songwriters, wary of repeating themselves, who know what they want to say, and are still figuring out how to say it.

The band fails to make a significant statement of their immediate necessity with this sophomore effort.

Widow’s Weeds may very well be the most ambitious album of Silversun Pickups’ catalog. And though it finds the band at their most self-assured with the cleanest, most polished sound of their career, it can also feel rushed, unfocused, hollow, and, worst of all, forgettable. It’s an ambitious, heartfelt album that never becomes the powerful record it was intended to be.

Taken on its own, it’s a fine if not slightly disappointing work. But looked at within his prolific catalog, it paints a picture of a musician who will never stop experimenting and will likely continue to make music until he physically can’t anymore.

If it rocks, it fits perfectly in a live setting, easy to place among their best-ofs. But when it slumps, it really crumbles.

Icarus Falls has a lot of songs and some of them are quite good. As a vehicle for blitzing the internet with Zayn singles, the album is totally effective. But the concept is only half-conceived, and the listening experience is repetitive and dull.

Solar Power is pleasant background music, an album you might default to beside the pool, but it ultimately lacks the cinematic grandeur that made tracks like “Green Light” or “Ribs” so deeply moving.

Gunnera isn’t a grand statement. It just lets some familiar names expand their expression, free from the shadow of their parent bands.

Conceptually big but musically slight, this return of the early ’90s Primus lineup promises a lot but delivers only fragments of what we know this band is capable of.

From Out of Nowhere isn’t going to be turning heads in 2019 with its lackluster production and, at times, generic lyricism. But it does remind us that Jeff Lynne is one of pop music’s greatest hook writers, and that skill isn’t easily forgotten.

The resulting effort is a largely uneven collection of songs that span everywhere from an actual Bruce Springsteen collaboration to subdued, orchestral ballads, from ‘70s-indebted heartland rock to ‘90s-inspired slow jams.

What 25 25 is missing are those necessary bits of relief that were worked into their previous album.

A booming, fun pop record that is refreshing by not attempting to be anything other, though that same inessentialism keeps the record from reaching transcendence.

It’s an overstuffed, yet often enthralling record by a band revealing depths that weren’t as apparent before.

While many of the songs on The Color Before the Sun do fall into a certain post-hardcore formula that’s used over and over again throughout the album, the journey presented therein makes the difference.

Active fans may be left underwhelmed and wanting more. So, while you’ll likely be tapping your foot and nodding your head, you might also be wrestling with the fact that none of this is new.

The best things Soldiers of Fortune have going for them are a palpable sense of energy and camaraderie. But after that ["Campus Swagger"], Early Risers gets a little too loose, a little too freewheeling to stay interesting as an LP.

When it comes to Uptown Special, Ronson put so much effort into polishing the crown jewel that he let the rest of the album tarnish.

7 is musical Chex Mix — lightweight and best consumed in selective increments, but also strangely addictive.

A few more of those scattered breaks into hip-hop and electronica could have given the record’s well-traveled sounds some fresh legs to stand on. Instead, it’s hard not to look at No Peace as a bit of a missed opportunity.

Even with its stunning, heartfelt moments, it’s hard to think of Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance as a cohesive Belle and Sebastian album. The band manages to blend their signature brand of subdued indie pop with new, bombastic disco cuts, but sometimes the disparity can be jarring.

Despite its lesser moments (forgivable, given the nature of the project), Shriek is a successful reinvention and hopefully a prelude of things to come as the band embarks on its new life.

Some of the harshness seems a little forced.

Music saves the misfit kids, but not every pain can be walloped into submission. Beach Slang sound less interested in ripping that pain open and exposing its insides than they are in shouting over it, and The Things We Do can start to sound like an exercise in emotional extremes.

Predictably, it’s the riskiest choices that pay the fewest dividends.... Fortunately, the album on the whole has enough of Morrissey’s strengths--the ones he established with Marr and co., first causing NME journos to wet their trousers 30 years ago--to be a mostly serviceable Morrissey album.

Maybe the best thing about dreams are the surprises we find there, that there is risk involved for it all to turn bad without much notice. Depression Cherry lacks these stakes, and the result is a dream that’s hard to remember once you’re outside of it.

A couple of the blues songs (“Here to Stay”, for instance) blend into the scenery and are soon forgotten, but the only real clunkers are the lighter fare, “Marlene” and “Old People”, which feel forced and unable to balance out the album’s darker moments.

If you’ve loved his music since The Smiths, and their music actually brings you joy, well, then there are things to be found on Low in High School that could possibly, maybe, present a solid argument for attempting to find a way to suck the goodness from this album ... while spitting out the pulp that is Morrissey himself.

HIVE1 falls just short in its transformation from art piece to LP.

Many of these tracks certainly evoke something older, plucked straight from a dad’s record collection, but Down in Heaven carries some of that mustiness. The record ends up being too careful, even occasionally uninspired.

Skeletons’ canned production is tolerable up to this point, with the riffs and drums serving as background noise to Danzig’s trademark voice, but it only dilutes a track like “N.I.B.”.

Folds’ gifts for narrative and composing are clear, but fusing the two more fluidly could be something magical.

Despite functionally inelegant song choices (“Big Red Gun”) and filler (“February Winds”), a good deal of Afraid of Heights trades in rapid-fire aggression for a calculated barrage of justified fear (the title track, “Ghost Ship of Cannibal Rats”).

Some of the songs feel too sterile and Pornos-by-numbers; others are derivative in a way the band rarely is. Overall, it would have been more successful as a five-song mini-LP than as a full-length.

Barter 6 feels like a step in the right direction rather than a destination, proof that Thugger can put together a complete package even if it’s less than adventurous.

None of the songs on Detour are without at least some merit, though a few are without any discernible marketplace value, save niche kiosks along I-40 or the occasional road tripper’s Spotify.

As a document of reunion between friends, Good Sad Happy Bad feels honest enough. On its own, it hits a note too lethargic and too muted to stick the way Levi’s past work has done.

Fans of the label and the genre will find many familiar elements to love, but anyone expecting the LCD tree to sprout an overwhelmingly exciting new limb will likely be disappointed.

Like a Japanese cherry blossom, however, the impact of E S T A R A is instantaneous and powerful, yet ultimately fleeting.

With Skrillex’s synth swipes holding it together, the album cannot help but become disjointed due to the numerous collaborators.

Taking a large musical step forward was the right move for Foals to make; smoothing the album out repeatedly until it becomes flat wasn’t.

Occasionally, Wayne sounds either torn about the kind of music he wants to be making or even just short on ideas.

There’s sonic beauty everywhere in Boy King. The arrangements are impeccable and frequently ingenuous, but the album doesn’t yield much on repeated listens. Somehow the humanity of Wild Beasts’ previous work is nowhere here.

CRX might pride themselves on not focusing excessively on cohesion, but on the level of the individual song, a lack of unity can undermine otherwise powerful elements. With New Skin, CRX have defined the parameters of who they are as a band. Going forward, they will need to find harmony in the tensions between them.

On Sr3mm, Discs One, Two, and Three are all hanging out on the same street corner. There are plenty of interesting moments. But it would have been nice to go on a journey.

If the record lacks the spunk and originality of past releases, then it more than makes up for it with the breadth of delightful hooks that flow through each song.

Southsiders is an Atmosphere album, which means that it is going to be better than many hip-hop releases this year, but it’s also exactly what you’d expect from the artists and has moments that feel outdated.

While AQUARIA is uniquely Asher’s and probably unlike anything else you’ll hear this year--a mix of heavy, grinding industrial beats and quick, nimble lyrics that whiz by like the view of the landscape from a train window--the truth buried at the bottom of the bass drop is that Asher himself isn’t yet magnetic enough to make his own material shine.

While Super is not indicative of the next big thing, and a few of the more club-oriented numbers sound more like remixes than actual songs, it’s an enjoyable way of catching up with the Pet Shop Boys while being served something fresh.

Before This World, though not a particularly remarkable album, reacquaints us with an old friend, one who we wish would visit more often.

On the whole, everything proceeds much too predictably and with far too much caution and restraint.

Dylan may naturally be better at the brooding that Shadows required, but these types of decisions equally prevent Fallen Angels from matching its predecessor.

["Trustful Hands" is] an obvious standout, the track succeeds at melding the duo’s earthy past with its streamlined present. If only the rest of Shake Shook Shaken combined The Dø’s left and right brain as seamlessly.

Despite presenting a more interesting record after 2015’s tedious Pagans in Vegas, Metric undoubtedly falter on their latest release. Their emphasis on guitars has certainly helped them, but Art of Doubt feels lacking in creativity. It’s a safe album, but safety can be insipid.

While With Light and With Love might sound more instantly accessible than previous Woods albums, it also shows that it might not be a good thing for Woods to tinker with their most defining quality: the intimacy of their songs.

Closer “Let’s Get Worn Away” manages to be more anchored with its sonic goals, able to shift through six or seven different phases to make it clear that Fec is aiming for a collage-like final product. Elsewhere though, Sweatbox Dynasty is mostly just composed of individual pieces of a collage, a mashup, a pastiche, whatever you want to call it.

Clearly Biffy Clyro see themselves as strivers, a band that charges relentlessly forward. But at times, listeners might wonder if they’re headed in any interesting direction.

Though Glasshouse has its fair share of misfires and middling material, it’s never for a lack of vision. Even when songs veer towards the pristine inoffensiveness of a Sam Smith, Ware’s affable personality is largely present.

This reinvented band reflects Dulli circa 2014, and this record sparks fresh intrigue but sadly never quite rekindles what made the Whigs so unique in the first place.

In a word, Everything Now finds Arcade Fire in a place they’ve never been. It’s unsubstantial.

The balance is off, and some songs suffer from a lack of direction.

While Neon Icon likely won’t be the push that RiFF needs into the public consciousness, it certainly won’t hurt his reputation.

In the era of extraordinary machines, Yvette’s Process is abrasive yet still human to the core.

When the record grazes the ceiling, the adrenaline is thrillingly palpable. But when it falls, it falls without grace.

Neither Art Official Age nor PLECTRUMELECTRUM aims to be a legendary Prince record, but both hit their marks anyway.

Their many-layered universes, however, spiral without building to a truly dramatic moment, either within each part or between the parts of the whole.

Neither Art Official Age nor PLECTRUMELECTRUM aims to be a legendary Prince record, but both hit their marks anyway.

The entirety of the record, in fact, feels like it’s trailing a few years behind. It frequently doesn’t quite grasp the soulful, jazz-adjacent vibes of the Brainfeeder crew and similar coastal cool.

The two women command their stage throughout, taking disparate styles in their stride.

Jumping from intense outpours to cheeky pop, it’s an album of songs meant to be cherry-picked and passed on, not listened to as a whole.

Command Your Weather is a passing blast--intriguing to devout followers and a punishing rehash for those who’ve already heard and digested the band’s best material.

The darker tone on Swimmin’ Time shows they’re able to change things up, but they may be too afraid of losing their momentum to really be daring.

Deap Vally are most compelling when they dig further than irreverently dismissing superficial, mainstreamed feminism, but rather go on to explore what makes modern womanhood disturbing or even terrifying, the omnipresent eye of patriarchy be damned.

And the Wave Has Two Sides might functionally serve for constant, heady background atmosphere, but it won’t help in understanding what ON AN ON intend their music to stand for.

What would be even more effective is more focus on spanning dynamics and intensity, which can come naturally when shooting for something a bit more personal, but that doesn’t negate Splendor as a successful sophomore step.

They aren’t content to simply let Cooper’s past speak for itself. Rather they lard the album with references to his best-known songs and try to get his backing band to often ape the instincts of the original Alice Cooper Band. ... The album is, at least, bookended by some strong material.

Suck My Shirt isn’t a huge departure for a band that likes their place in the garage, but it’s enough to keep fans busy without dulling the edges.

Lerche’s playful expressions of heartbreak capture those [emotional] extremes with competent, if rote, poise, even if a few of his experiments fall flat.

Makes a King, in comparison [to the Very Best’s early albums], feels a bit one-note, though they can still hit that one note hard.

This is a professional album, but the Violets are known as professional rabble-rousers, not professional studio rats.

Even in Hymns’ clumsier moments, the band never try to be something they’re not.

Despite the record’s production, some of the group’s most ambitious to date, it feels incomplete, seemingly ending five or six songs early. It’s a grower, yes, but there’s too much to unpack for it to sound vital to modern hip-hop’s equilibrium.

Despite it purposely avoiding any links via nomenclature, Electric Würms echoes Flaming Lips. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is purely subjective, but here’s hoping that Drozd will get to maintain the helm on future projects.

The missteps don’t detract too much from this ambitious, if slightly unfocused, debut.

It’s a diverse guest list, and as a consequence, MC4 is too disjointed to feel like a definitive statement.

The band’s ninth studio effort ebbs and flows, but in the end, it has enough going for it to merit its existence, which is more than a lot of bands can say about their second-stands.

For now, with the biting and enjoyable Television Man, the band feels a bit stuck in a predictable art punk sludge.