Everything I Thought It Was feels less like a terrible Justin Timberlake album and more like wasted potential. Man of the Woods was terrible, but at least he took a risk. This one is fine, frictionless, and overwhelmingly safe.

Vultures 1 won’t be the worst hip-hop album of the year, but it’s repetitive, redundant, and far too impressed with itself to be enjoyed by anyone but true believers.

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.

The final product is an exercise in meh as he tries blending who he is with who he used to be, along with his more significant commercial responsibilities.

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.

It’s settled, comfortable, and a bit too repetitive. It’s inoffensive, which is perhaps worst of all. Equals commits the greatest sin of pop music: it just isn’t very interesting.

[“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.

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.

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.

Although Weezer’s shared love of (and debt) to the Sabbaths and Van Halens of the world is undeniable, their homages to those bands feel as scattershot as they are heartfelt.

All in all, he has a pretty solid record of radio-ready hits, some that could double back as hazy, danceable club tracks. But MLK could have been left to rest in peace.

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.

Kesha is in transition, searching for that balance that can give her music meaningful identity in the future. High Road’s few shining moments — the vulnerability of her ballads and the wild sparks sprinkled throughout — suggest that balance is imminent. High Road is ironically (and unfortunately) a low point in Kesha’s career.

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.

Blink-182’s second album with Matt Skiba is ultimately subpar, weighed down by stereotypical lyrics and cloying choruses. Producers John Feldmann and Tim Pagnotta’s heavy use of compression makes NINE as in-your-face as possible, not giving the songs the necessary breathing room to develop without overproduction.

The finish is messy, the mixing hops from decade to decade, and the album flow is nonexistent. There are a couple of great moments, especially “Rubberband”. But without those finer touches, it often doesn’t even sound like Miles Davis, just some dude blowing a horn.

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 an abyss between the kid on Acid Rap and the man on The Big Day. And while you can’t blame a man for growing up and aging out of those topics, you can blame him for not being able to communicate in a way that still resonates with his fans.

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

Madonna has created this music for an audience of one: Herself. Often it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

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.

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.

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.

On Free Spirit, Khalid sounds caught between wanting to play a superstar and wanting to be himself, with the result that he sounds like neither.

These new sad songs don’t quite hit the soul like previous ones did.

Of course, The Black Album is not completely void of redeeming qualities, and there will likely be many listeners who are pleased with what they hear at times. Those listeners, however, may not be those who fell in love with the version of Weezer that existed in the middle of the ‘90s. Instead, the listeners within that sector may feel something comparable to watching a good friend make a bad decision.

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.

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.

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.

Muse’s firm embrace of electronic tropes risks fragmenting their fan base, particularly those who had been by their side since their earlier days and would find certain elements of Simulation Theory to sound shockingly foreign. ... Listeners who had previously revelled in the moments where Muse dipped their toe into electronica will delight in finally seeing them cannonball into the pool. It’s polarizing for sure, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

MØ deserves credit for consistency; almost every song on Forever Neverland is pleasant enough, but few rise above “pleasant.” The everything-is-a-hook songwriting style works better in small doses.

QUAVO HUNCHO ends up being a half-and-half affair: half making it easy to hit the skip button and the other half highlighting the talents Quavo brings to Migos.

On their debut, Greta Van Fleet proves their ability to resurrect the sounds of the past, but not necessarily that they’re ready to make those sounds into something they truly own.

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.

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.

Lyrics that need to be read aloud to be understood, plus an unsettling discombobulation of tempos, dynamics, and various internal compositions, plus Leschper’s monotonous drone, all co-existing for nearly one hour becomes mentally exhausting and almost frustrating halfway through Render.

There are moments when it feels admirable in its scope and ambition, but ultimately, the pure intentions get lost in the noise.

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.

Something about the tossed-off quality of Teatime Dub Encounters feels like a missed opportunity.

If one Ty Segall record a year isn’t enough for you, you’ll likely find enough muggy demo-grade fun amid Joy’s best moments. If you’re a dabbler who’s already given part of your 2018 to Freedom’s Goblin, though, you’re probably safe sitting this one out.

Unsurprisingly, his charm has worn thin. What’s left without it is a body of work that is self-indulgent, largely evasive, and frankly boring when the beat is not quite strong enough to steady the ship.

For now, Gorillaz seem content to oscillate between extremes, a futuristic pop powerhouse that cannot decide what the future looks like.

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.

Many of these songs will soar in arenas and on festival main stages. They’re expansive, epic, and Mayberry’s powerful voice never wavers. But that openness comes at a price, and throughout Love Is Dead, every time CHVRCHES have the chance to get stranger, messier, and more unique, they rein in their eccentricities, going cleaner and more general.

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.

“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.

My Dear Melancholy, has cohesion, but it’s a listless, murky sound that never unhinges the way you want it to. Had he pushed a little further, it could have made for something more substantial, rather than walking up to the cusp and then backing down.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

While The Saga Continues engenders enough wistful reminiscences to satisfy the core, it provides shockingly little in the way of memorable moments.

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.

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.

The whole album feels like it has been flattened out for the sake of streaming services. Without the big, chewy hooks, the songs tend to bleed together indistinguishably in hindsight.

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.

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

There are few truly wince-inducing moments through this tidy little collection, and when they arrive, they’re blessedly brief.

This apparent quest for new sounds produced Death from Above’s belated sophomore slump, a collection of songs that finds the duo pulled in directions that play against their strengths and makes them sound, for the first time, a little dull.

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.

It’s more of the same. It seems to be needing something more. An extra spark of interest.

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

Naturally, the beats are excellent across the board, although 21 Savage uses a little more Autotune and makes more of a play for the pop charts with some slinky R&B jams. ... Unfortunately, these reflective moments are outnumbered by repetitive odes to getting high, getting laid, and getting lots of money. What’s worse, some of his lyrics aren’t just bland, but blatantly homophobic.

Likely as clean as you have ever heard it, Big’s flow is the glue that holds an otherwise disjointed project together with cadences that kick the songs into hyperdrive, cement his versatility, and prove that he and the Organized Noize production team--the guys that built The Dungeon and the bulk of the joints on this album-- might be close to returning to form. Their indecision about the creative direction of the project, however, takes away from the overall quality of the release.

Witness has great singles, forgettable singles, forgettable filler, and songs that go clunk.

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.

Relaxer represents ambition and a willingness to take chances. The downside is that it finds the band in a state of confusion, pulled in all directions and sacrificing a sense of cohesion.

Although it features a few radio-ready summer moments, Waiting on a Song never quite rises to the heights reached by its famous collaborators or canon-approved inspirations.

Ponderous musicality can be both mesmerizing and boring, and Black Laden Crown touches on both extremes.

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

An outing as plain as its title. It is the band’s most consistent album in years, never dipping into any true clinkers but never approaching anything close to a risk either.

There are flashes of a more invigorating band underneath, but Season High ultimately ends up the kind of record for festival attendees to pleasantly dance along to while sipping their drinks waiting for the headliner.

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.

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

Best to appreciate them for what they are: a noble effort that likely won’t have a marked impact on the world at large.

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 double album concept only waters down Kozelek’s biting social commentary and exquisite observations on living.

It’s not the glut of product that’s Future’s problem. Future’s problem is that, like his cohort Drake, he’s drunk on his own myth, and unlike Drake, his (intentionally) limited skill set doesn’t have any obvious backdoors to sneak out of for his career’s third act.

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.

While it’s a relief that there’s no supergroup pretension present, it’s also a shame that it sounds like the original projects of its members thrown into a blender cranked to its highest setting. That kind of blending obscures the individual contributions of each musician, which ultimately renders Echolocation a dull effort.

Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’ seems concerned with little more than keeping up appearances. Hopefully, the high points of the album are a proper barometer, and Kid Cudi’s next destination is a sight better than this.

Between the abundant déja vu and the periodical redundancy (doldrums which would be easy enough to overlook on a full-length, but prove problematic on a brisk 21-minute listen like this), Not the Actual Events’ purported “impenetrability” manifests as a riotous retread instead.

As he closes the final chapter in his Oxygène trilogy, Jarre somehow finds a way to fit all its components in a box, but can’t quite tie the bow holding them together.

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.

Darkness and Light loses its depth, however, when Legend skews toward pop (see: “Love Me Now”), even if these songs do maintain a catchy candor. Fortunately for the album, they’re rare and few.

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

At nearly 80 minutes, it’s understandable for an album like Hardwired… to Self-Destruct to have lulls, but the band gets way too comfortable way too early.

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.

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.

As a band that formed in 2007 and became emblematic of indie pop in the early part of this decade, Two Door Cinema Club were already sliding towards irrelevance. Unfortunately, Gameshow doesn’t really help to arrest that trajectory.

Three is a Phantogram record in that it’s a well-crafted release, but it lacks the originality Phantogram prided themselves on.

Revolution Radio plods its way down roads the band first stomped on years ago. In a career filled with euphoric highs and honorable lows, this might be the first album that sits exactly on the middle of the scale, dipping its toes into every possible outcome but refusing to dive in and embrace either comfort or chaos.

While Head Carrier may fall far short of lightning bolts raining down from Olympus, there’s enough reason to believe Pixies have a bit of thunder in them yet.

These songs, plus several others, are ultimately frustrating because they never achieve Die Antwoord’s self-professed new direction. Even more frustrating, the few tracks that try something different end up being some of the group’s strongest material to date.

The album could offer some really tender moments, but because they’re buried under lyrics that talk about nothing but sex, they’re lost. Instead, The Divine Feminine leaves a sour taste behind and entirely misses an opportunity to truly honor the female gender.