Under the production of John and T-Bone Burnett (back again after The Diving Board), the instrumentation on Wonderful Crazy Night is glossy yet separate, as if each part was recorded in its own high-end echo chamber. As a result, none of it sounds unified--more high-fidelity karaoke mix than a band that’s playing together.

Gibbard never swings hard enough to strike out completely, with occasionally unfortunate production balanced by warm melodies, one of Gibbard’s greatest strengths as a musician.

Kanye West-referencing record, Sheezus, which is at its strongest when it cops to more details and weakens considerably when the London-born singer-songwriter falls back on generalities.

It appears that the group is still plagued by these awkward growth spurts.

Thank You for Today is Death Cab for Cutie’s weakest album of the decade and either a transition towards something greater or the first harbinger of creative decline.

Bazaar lacks a cohesive thread to signify any real musical progression.

TUMIM shows a regression to the mean, further establishing him as an above-average emcee whose runaway hype train simply ran off the tracks.

There are moments on this album that provoke genuine optimism for where a song might go, but then Estelle starts singing lyrics so genuinely bland and awkward that all hope is lost.

This Is What the Truth Feels Like lacks a cohesive style, instead focusing on narrative.

The Cave Singers belong to the same family tree as dynamic Seattle rock bands Murder City Devils and Pretty Girls Make Graves, which makes it even more frustrating that they keep resorting to the same old stomps and claps.

Cooper and Hoare not only borrow, but fully adopt characteristics of traditionalist rock, like inoffensive lyrics, bland instrumentation, and unfettered nostalgia, all of which makes Green Lanes barely discernible from hundreds of other albums.

Perry has always been a top-notch entertainer, who tries on a range of styles and wants to make folks feel good. I’m not asking her to be anything else. But what comforted us before, both in pop and faith, doesn’t hit the same anymore.

Each passing cycle saps a little more life from the record, until we’re left with background music, fluff that goes in one ear and out the other. That includes the lyrics, which run the gamut from sentimental, to rote, to downright creepy.

The Felice Brothers seem out of their depth here, reveling in tired imagery and pretending to make it fresh by changing just a few small details.

The band’s talent and the occasional strike of inspiration make it impossible to write off AB/AP entirely. Let’s just hope they eventually strike a balance that’s true to themselves and doesn’t come off like a mainstream radio retread.

Small Sounds does, as promised, show a subtle and seemingly natural shift in their sound as it morphs into more soulful, Motown-inspired grooves.

Plenty of artists can make up for tired phrases in their musicality. Thrice even did it themselves on Identity Crisis, elevating the largely overdramatic lyrics through loud/soft contrast and brain-rattling thrash. To Be Everywhere has no such energy, relegated to medium pacing and chord progressions that usually find the bass and guitars linked together in a monotonous crunch.

It’ll satisfy the crowdfunders who have already paid for it, and if it helps the band bring their classic albums to more live ears, then it has done its job. As a work on its own, though, the Zombies’ sixth studio album comes off more polite than hungry.

The tracks all blend together into a generic folk album.

Besides his inflexibly skeletal vocals being an awkward fit for a full orchestra --his phrasing has a hard time keeping up with the loose, big band swing of “Say Hello to Chicago”--some of his clunky lyrics become even clunkier when taken out of a more hushed, intimate setting.

Where earlier efforts such as Hallowed Ground saw the band command sparse irreverence, Hotel Last Resort, much like We Can Do Anything, won’t generate much excitement.

There’s still much to admire in their metallic production and musicianship, especially from the rhythm section of bassist P-Nut and drummer Chad Sexton. But unqualified positivity can only go so far, in the end turning into something that can make you feel a little negative.

While this new self-titled album may point to a band dedicated to writing a new chapter for itself, the music they’ve made here only acts as the tentative (and skippable) introduction.

The Maddens and co. sound like they’re throwing the obligatory tropes of encroaching middle age against the wall, hoping that something, anything, will stick.

While the goodwill is obfuscated by a lack of direction, A Better Tomorrow is made further futile because of the misinformed goal of simply giving the fans another Wu-Tang album.

It’s not a bad or poorly constructed release by any means, but it is emotionally monotonous, the sound of three incredibly angry dudes spewing their grievances about the world while impassably dense guitar distortion splashes around them.

This sounds like a case of a band unraveling their weirdness.

Likely under tight deadline, each track tends to live squarely within the individual producer’s standard production palette.

Coma Ecliptic clocks in at over an hour, but most discouraging is the band’s failure to translate the album’s conceptual themes to the listener in that timespan.

“Same Bitches” sounds like a song Ty Dolla $ign once made and ultimately scrapped, and Post was more than happy to turn another man’s trash into his treasure, no matter how awkward or forced he sounds among more natural fits G-Eazy and YG.

While there is nothing abhorrent about Tanlines’ pleasant sophomore effort, it seems their passion was supplanted by force of habit.

Once one grows comfortable with the album’s prevailing electro-acoustic ambiance, the repetitive song structures do little to add energy to the beleaguered soundscapes.

Songs of Experience is an album where the band’s best and worst songs of this century can exist next to each other, where vast rewrites make it apparent that multiple rounds of sessions went into the finished product.

Initiation is the type of album that’ll please many, infatuate a few, and fade from memory for the rest.

Get Hurt sounds like The Gaslight Anthem trying to figure out what kind of band they want to be.

Gone Now makes it clear that he knows his way around a chorus--he often jumps right into them at the start of songs--but verses are strained and general while impulses are too often freely indulged, rather than examined and pulled apart in the hopes of building something that looks more like innovation than imitation.

The problem is The History of Apple Pie managed to fork over 10 songs of generic, sugared pop that’s almost entirely forgettable by the time dinner rolls around.

His lyricism, though timely at points, is largely impersonal if not flat-out pedestrian and makes NASIR the first album in Nas’ catalog that Nas has failed to show up for.

Just as things seem a little promising, the limp “Thinkin'” struts in like a Carrie Underwood c-side and firmly sets the tone for the record’s toothless closing third.

While Last Year Was Complicated is completely adequate, its highlights are a SparkNotes summary of the pop music from the past 12 months.

The lack of specificity blunts the potential trauma of Bad Love’s heartbreak, the trauma that its well-apportioned, dramatic music demands.

Lee may be an expert when it comes to lush atmospherics, but he’s simply not interested in pursuing the small mistakes that give a song its personality.

Rubba Band Business, is, unfortunately, more of the same.

The Khoshravesh brothers’ Iranian sound spices things up on a few tracks, but not enough to prompt multiple listens. Hansard’s passion seems to be lacking in the way he sings on most tracks, and that ends up being a letdown. Perhaps the experience of making the album was much more magical than the music that resulted from it.

There’s no denying Future’s ability to constantly curate content, but perhaps with a little more time and focus, Save Me could have been significantly better.

Taylor doesn’t hit the requisite hands-flailing-in-the-air, feet-stomping sweet spot we’ve come to expect.

[“Coloratura” is] the song that most resembles the free spirit of Everyday Life and how much they’re capable of pulling off in a 10 minute, sprawling odyssey. Even more, it shows how resistant Coldplay are to becoming Maroon 5. If the rest of Music of the Spheres is any indication, then unfortunately, that’s where they’re headed.

True to the album name, Minus Tide is one body of work that lacks the aggression that initially made Lemonade so exciting.

Sure, you can wallow in disappointment that this record ranks a distant fifth alongside the band’s classic LPs, but don’t allow yourself in the process to miss out on a handful of worthwhile songs.

While Prince is raging against the dying of the light, there exists no graceful innovation on HITNRUN Phase Two. Instead, Prince presents only an aped version of his one-time vitality.

While this blissful resistance to sophistication has always been present in Matt and Kim’s work in the past, on New Glow, they seem to have regressed even further from twee hallmarks like “Daylight” or “Let’s Go”.

This is music created under the role of the supportive brother, and for much of it, he’s too focused on his sibling’s creations to fully flesh out his own work.

Us and the Night offers some bland, platitude-driven positivity, but only once shadowed by equally vague problems. There’s a thin line between building out themes for an album and getting stuck in a rut, and this one unfortunately sounds like it falls towards the latter.

If your first language is, say, Russian or Chinese, then you might enjoy the musicality of some of 6ix9ine’s verses even though they blur together. Unfortunately, Dummy Boy is not improved with a knowledge of English, and indeed that might be an obstacle to enjoying the album.

Most of the songs on New Misery sound exactly like Smith Westerns without Kakacek. But here’s the rub: Omori’s voice is so airy that it works best when punctuated by meat-and-potatoes moments straight out of the classic rock cookbook.

The overly complicated percussion is an impractical fit for his songwriting style and offers little for the listener to cling to.

The inconsistency brings down the album as a whole and makes it a difficult front-to-back listen.

Sadly, Marks To Prove It puts all its work into weighty matters instead of incorporating the quintet’s funny bone.

Its shortcomings are fundamental--too long, too repetitive, too reliant on novelty--though hardcore fans will dig the spontaneity and candor.

Words rarely coheres into a legible sequence of rhythms or melodies, rarely evolves into more than textural noodling and atmospheric energy.

For once, the darkness of Poliça’s shadows are too muddled to make the climb through them worthwhile.

The album’s lack of originality extends to its music as well as its sloganeering.

Nearly half the record--the cuts featuring Williams and Paul--comes off more as a marketing ploy than thoughtful collaboration.

As a whole, the albums works on a cohesion, transitioning from stronger, more powerful tracks (“Dynasti”, “Dean & Me”, and “All White Everything”) to the remaining eight cuts, which are breezy, quiet, and, sadly, quite boring, thanks to cheesier lyrics and lack of production effort.

There’s a world where rerecording Dark Side of the Moon works, but this redux is too misguided, too indulgent, and too up Waters’ behind to take all that seriously.

House of Spirits is the saturnine successor nobody asked for, a detour though a bramble patch running parallel to a stretch of open road.

Ash & Ice lacks cohesive identity. Any record with Mosshart’s vocals and Hince’s guitar will be identifiable as a product of The Kills, but the record both feels inconsistent and as if the songs all blend together.

It’s good that the band feels a responsibility to communicate strong messages of hope and unity to their base of fans and beyond, but it’s naive for them to think that Will of the People’s pseudo-provocative stance is good enough.

By the standards of the Weiland of old, Blaster falls softly short; its best flavors come from the handful of new touches. A number of songs here sound like undeveloped ideas from previous bands.

Young the Giant are a technically proficient group who no doubt shred through these tracks during live performances, but the over-production is an impediment to enjoying the individual performances.

Lost Loves isn’t without its charms, but it’s a frustrating listen that represents another self-imposed hurdle in the band’s development.

The Rosebuds instead have limited themselves and recorded an album that's generally good while being limited in its emotional scope and thus utterly disappointing in the long run.

While there are a few gems on Born to Sing, he's riding his name through the album instead of having something to say.

There's some genuine emotional sentiment displayed, but the swagger's too powerful and everything falls prey to blasé boasts.

Unfortunately, far too many tracks on the their sophomore LP, Spreading Rumours, hear the LA space cadets sounding, well, grounded.

Here And Now might prove to be a step above the last effort, but likewise a step high enough to hang its creators on a barn rafter.

It’s more of a song-based effort than some of the Gang’s previous work, but it doesn’t have the structural bones or the lyrical meat to stand up on its own.

Reminders of the past are pleasant, but at the end of the day, you'll be choosing Power, Corruption & Lies or Songs of Faith and Distortion over Sons & Daughters' Mirror, Mirror.

The album's a little too incoherent for even the most devout of electroheads.

The band sounds like they're having a great time, but the end result is markedly boring.

Just Tell Me That You Want Me falters due to mediocre renditions and some serious song selection issues.

In the case of The Rifles' latest album, Freedom Run, problems stem from a lack of variety throughout its 13 tracks.

Overall, Selfhood is caught between two worlds in the worst kind of way.

There are some lovely, warm, breezy beats, as on "Hits Me Like a Rock", but the vocals seem so drenched in effects that it takes away from any kind of earthiness, and Bobby Gillespie's appearance seems fatuous, a nod to the kind of sound they are hoping to achieve.

Because Caveman simmers at the same murky tempo for 45 minutes, even the melodies start to lose their sweetness.

In the sense of everything common and respectively boring, the majority of Songs for the Ravens doesn't pull off anything new and exciting.

Though this record may represent a simple dusting off for Verse, a confident move towards a legitimately more mature sound would have been a more fitting return than the androgyny between past and future found on Bitter Clarity.

Like Daft Punk’s soundtrack for Tron: Legacy before it (a film also directed by Joseph Kosinski), Oblivion is symbiotically dependent on the silver screen.

Where once they were on the cusp of the avant, breaking down walls through experimentation and sonic manipulation, with Fool Metal Jack, rather than come off as updated or even retro-fitted, they simply sound dated.

In the end, though, the groans far outweigh the mindless fun.

While positivity is an accessible escape within music, his comeback surfaces nothing new, accumulating few tracks that stand out and many an overkill.

Nothing on the record comes across as natural, and it’s not until the album’s iTunes bonus tracks--“Brightest Morning Star” and “Now That I Found You” in particular--that Spears sounds like she’s singing for herself. But, on the album proper, neither the pop figurehead nor the real woman behind it can be found.

(together) would have made more sense as a second disc in a deluxe version of Burst Apart, where uber-fans who needed variations on the songs would've thought nothing of taking the extra plunge. Unfortunately, as a separate release, it just doesn't have the legs to stand on its own.

Top Ten Hits often sees a band with a highly stylized identity sitting inside of another band with a highly stylized identity. More often than not, these halves clash, one entirely overpowering the other, negating what makes the concept interesting.

Greene's efforts of merging the decidedly low-key sounds of bedroom music and the urban thump of hip-hop represent a good first step in the continued evolution of the genre, but in the end, the resulting efforts feel warped by the confines of Greene's bedroom pop dedication.

There is a lot of flash-in-the-pan potential in the band, but I'm sure there will be some Williamsburg/Soho hipsters that will hang on long enough to give The Death Set a second or third 15 minutes.

This is more exhausting, if anything, making Heavy Blanket only worth seeking out for the Mascis diehards.

In summation, for a band that received little limelight in the beginning, Little Dragon showed immense talent and work ethic to earn their keep in the world. Our question is this: Where were those two items when recording Ritual Union?