Tempest delivers yet another collection of the ramblers that have populated Dylan's records since Time Out of Mind.

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

Parts of Nikki Nack are interesting, deeply beautiful, and insanely catchy. Other parts are painful to listen to given their overt blindness to the nuances of holding conversations like the ones she attempts to initiate.

It’s a unique recording, a shocking, exciting collaboration performed in full faith. But it too often fails to be more than the sum of its parts.

It turns out they were right to push through the breakup, but a few bleak songs dampen the high they’re chasing after as a result.

In the end, the record feels like a copy of a copy, though produced on what may just be the world’s best copier. If nothing else, though, the record works as a pleasing re-centering for one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

The album’s heavier points tend to slant alternately intriguing and confusing.

We attempt to find a pattern in the nonsense (both in the vocals and in the music itself), to figure out what this is supposed to be saying. But Copeland is there at the knobs, twisting things just out of our reach.

The collaborators' influences are visible, but not dominant, as Washburn's banjo remains central, striking a nice balance. Some fine tuning and vocal variation could make for a stellar follow-up to these new genre endeavors, but a return to her classics, for this immensely talented artist, would be equally as appreciated.

Visions of a Life is often full, seeming to overflow. But the substance is lacking, resulting in a tiring trip through a band gamely trying not to merely cover itself.

While it's still a worthy comeback for a band way past its prime, Researching the Blues is similarly only a few solid tracks away from greatness.

Beneath the lyrics live a less-than-cohesive batch of songs. But when the band allows each track a little more breathing room, they show some growth and have a good time doing it.

Reality Testing, then, pushes into new territory so well that it erases the possibility of its existence as a one-time distraction, and its few major successes lead to expectations of a more unified version.

Thundercat releases typically detail grand worlds, but The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam relies too heavily on unspecific, cliched lyrical pain.

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

It's rewarding if given the occasional spin but tiresome if spun too often.

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.

For better and worse, surprises on Emmaar are scarce if there are any.

The songs just don't stick long enough to make more than an impression in the pillow.

From the lean, scrappy production value to the grandiose guitar solos and Alex Coxen’s wobbling, vocal delivery a la Grant Hart, the record has the messy fingerprints of indie rock’s cherished first wave smeared all over it.

The vast majority of Quakers are pretty forgettable, while all but a couple of those which star big names like Aloe Blacc and Booty Brown, among others, do little more than offer a handful of choice glimpses at said big names' glory days, making for a static and decidedly unmemorable listen throughout.

C’est La Vie has moments of real beauty and depth while reflecting on fatherhood and settling down. But Houck should keep pushing into the strange, uncomfortable places where his best music gets made; now’s not the time to shrug it off.

On Pale Horses, they seek a comfortable spot between weighty post-hardcore and artful indie rock introspection, but ultimately sound suppressed.

This is a really pleasing album. Just don't listen too hard to the words.

Solange delivers an EP stocked with promising parts slightly dashed by a burgeoning identity crisis.

Aside from initial single "Stone Letter" and its vitriolic chorus, most won't come away humming many of the hooks or melodies, the way one might after listening to a Faith No More album.

Exudes sheer fun as it embraces an honest love of classic House.

Ultimate Painting is professionally executed, but at times underwhelming. Still, Cooper and Hoare have undeniable chemistry, and the album seems to be the start of a promising partnership.

The newly expanded outfit leans more heavily on their prog rock influences, losing some of the distinctions and dichotomies that made their debut so powerful.

Remedy is a mostly pleasant, forgettable dose of Americana.

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.

The glossy pop songs will disappoint fans who liked her more unusual aspects, while the weird bits may put off the more casual listener.

What we're left with sounds an awful lot like someone trying to recapture the manner in which to express frustration and rage. She's not quite able to set the angst burners to full, but should she need to?

On the whole, How Do You Do is a satisfying effort.

The EP's major aesthetic shifts do lead to one issue: the lack of a core or soul to How to destroy angels_, a shortcoming which will hopefully be resolved on the outfit's forthcoming long-player.

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?

On Strong Feelings, his third full-length, Paisley’s pointed but oxygenated arrangements allow the best facets of his penmanship to bold-face themselves.

Night Beds offer a fine experience to listeners who are looking to hear saccharine pop with limited twang.

Throughout Earth Suck, Oozing Wound manage to deliver biting criticisms and headbanging riffs with their tongues in their cheeks, without either losing the power of the music or biting those tongues clean off.

While the album features several standout tracks and stunning vocals, as a whole, over-shined production and mashed-up genres obscure Murphy’s strengths.

Mug Museum lacks any sort of emotional dialogue with the listener.

Her construction techniques have always made for gigantic sonic treetops, and even better, the wind that rustled the entire forest. But when concentrating on placement rather than scope, simple additions don’t go as far.

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

On Prophet, Knopf plays it by the book. In this sense, the most surprising thing about the album is how unsurprising it is. Knopf gets by, though, thanks to his raw skills as a crafter of songs, which are abundantly clear throughout.

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.

At its best, Vessel's debut LP for Tri-Angle, Order of Noise makes you cock your head and wonder why you'd never heard that particular high-end squonk used in the place where a low-end splomp would usually go, the cards moving too fast to pick out the placement. At worst, Gainsborough's reliance on the value of shifting cards seems to trump what the cards actually are, and the fact that those three cards aren't ever leaving your sight.

AFI covers most of the band’s explored genres, giving fans from every era something to appreciate. Unfortunately, this means no one will be completely satisfied.

The album is more a loving revival than a modernization of some of the Everly Brothers’ lesser-known songs. But when the duo’s influence can still be heard trickling into everything from Fleet Foxes to Animal Collective, it’s hard to claim that What the Brothers Sang does much more than reminisce.

The album’s middle stagnates some, but even at its least focused, Invisible Life is a pleasant experience, Lange’s downy production floating by like a pastel cloud.

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

Nabuma Rubberband is Little Dragon’s selfish record, and splendidly so. Some of the sweet moments in its strongest tracks, however, are lost in others, as is the nature of an album with standout tracks.

There are some sweet moments on Little Dark Age and some stale ones. More often than not, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser lapse back into a sardonic mode that sounded a whole lot better in 2007 than it does in 2018.

A reflection of the outfit’s independent nature, Les Revenants shows Mogwai succeeding in their aim to replace the typical anxiety-inducing scores of horror flicks with one that urges the viewer to uncover their own fears within the melody.

The finished product is still strong and consistent, to be sure, but with the lack of variety, Pylon is likely to be remembered as an album that just kept a constant rhythm for 56 minutes.

By playing both to nostalgic sensibilities and trying to literally occupy the same territory he once did, Hesitation Marks is only welcome in that it puts Nine Inch Nails on tour. But, for the album itself, the good ideas seem to have been wasted on trying to revive something that killed itself years ago.

While every cover on The Love may not be exceptional, Corinne Bailey Rae once again exhibits remarkable vocal and musical range.

Not all listeners are likely to enjoy the moments of instrumental experiments, but the varying forms of psych rock that pack the 53 minutes of Beard, Wives, Denim are enough to please both fans of Pond and those waiting for a Tame Impala follow up.

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.

Even with some of the more outstanding flaws, the album is worthy of a listen by both post-hardcore aficionados and fans of the group members' other bands.

Unfortunately, it seems the desire to be wild and innovative eclipsed the will to create songs that hold together.

Ranked alongside the Heartbreakers’ back catalog, their 13th falls somewhere in the middle. As a measuring of the fire inside Petty, however, readings are strong. Listening to Hypnotic Eye, you can rest assured he’s still kicking.

Call it getting lost in a sea of other great bands, but Real Estate has yet to truly claim their own piece of the surf-pop movement.

.5: The Gray Chapter may not win over new fans to the rest of their catalog, but it’s enough to open the eyes of those of us who haven’t given Slipknot a second thought in 10 years.

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.

While they stick fairly close to that line most of the time, the effort takes some of the wild energy and fun out of the results.

Since the LP’s 11 tracks always keep the listener at arm’s length, it’s best to treat them with the same indifference. Don’t be the reacher in this relationship.

Every Open Eye goes down smooth, but it’s hard not to miss the moments of exhilaration that used to power the band.

Amos manages to weave her own mythology into larger fantastical stories, and fight societal norms in the process, all with a fierceness that will please old fans and likely win over new ones.

If Brazos can focus on their strengths, they have the potential to make a pleasant, summery mark on pop music.

Hunx has returned with a reduced lineup of Punx (formerly the Punkettes) and a sophomore full length, Street Punk, which is a far more aggressive endeavor than its predecessor.

On Serpents Unleashed, Ohio quintet Skeletonwitch’s own blend of European melodic death metal, thrash, and black metal falls prey to flat production, which further stacks the deck against the band’s already ill-defined sound.