The intangibles are all here in spades, and it’s obvious these guys have an exciting vision. Commontime is just arranged in such a way that the album’s contents are thrown into disarray.

Natives is an effort of exquisite pop.

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

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.

Unfortunately, there are as many lows as there are highs on this debut.

Despite the ability to place this on a continuum, this is a record that sounds so dissimilar from its kin, a unique new version of an old favorite.

Had GFK’s focus been on par with his corresponding hero’s repulsor beam, this record would’ve been more than a solid collection that fails in trying to make high-art with a half-hearted storyline.

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.

With the exception of the reaffirming victory lap of “Money Bags (Paradise)”, a lot of the material surrounding that five-track streak [“Sunday’s Best,” “Parallels," “Sunday’s Best,” “Monday’s Worst”] falls short.

He gets major points for continuing to stand behind his artistic vision and this album will likely satisfy longtime fans, even if it isn’t the breakthrough he has been hinting at for over a decade.

Especially on the front half, tracks flow into each other inconspicuously, and two of the nine are one song split into two parts, probably unnecessarily. The effect, then, is a bit of a shrug, a signal that James either has less to say or is less inclined to profess it.

Who Needs Who marks Dark Dark Dark as a band to watch, even if they are still a few songs short of hitting their stride.

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.

Despite the band's place in the alternative country/Southern rock movement, this album is still full of some yarns that should have never been woven.

Purgatory/Paradise is a mixed bag, and while it lives up more to the first half of its title than the latter, its best moments still prove worthy of the wait.

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.

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.

The album is a simple paean to the joys of motherhood and oozes contentment at every turn.

It seems Family of the Year's fun-drenched formula is working just fine.

The meandering, navel-gazing second half diminishes the succinct and undeniable power of the first.

On Evil Genius, Gucci Mane sounds like he’s having fun and his rapping is as polished as ever. But too much of the album comes across as filler, and his lyrics seem afraid to take any kind of chance.

Like its namesake, this album feels more like a temporary solution than a permanent way forward.

Together, Musgraves and her dream team of co-writers (Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally, and Luke Laird) draw from the well of folksy tales about letting your freak flag fly one too many times.

The Original Faces is full of blurred notes. It seems Harris, even if presenting a new authenticity, can’t shape it into recognizable form.

They keep up with the kids so convincingly, though, that The Sonics fall into the exact same traps. While the lyrics largely aim for cheeky goofballery, they occasionally flounder in eyeroll territory.

Mostly, Elephant & Castle captures the sensual possibilities of electronica without settling into well-rubbed grooves.

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.

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.