There's enough here to satiate fans--"I Don't Like Who I Was Then" is as good as their best work--but there's an underlying sense that for the first time, the Wonder Years have missed the mark.

GLUE will appeal to fans of '90s alternative rock who are looking for more, but will continue to alienate Boston Manor's longtime pop-punk-loving fans.

While highlight "The Glass" is an undisputedly heartbreaking acoustic-tinged ditty about living the rest of your life in someone's absence, the mid-LP tracks unfortunately do little more than fill obligatory spots on the Foo Fighters spectrum.

This compilation feels totally unnecessary and impersonal, neither satisfying for old fans nor will it convince new ones of the band's greater legacy. They deserve better.

It's a shame to find Grizzly Bear spinning their wheels.

A touch of '80s-style production, including occasional saxophone-as-emotional-beat, at times threatens to nudge things into a satirical mash-up of Dire Straits/Bruce Hornsby hits, but they ride the right side of that precipice.

The production is on point and the rhyme patterns are above average, but there's a distinct lack of cohesion.

A raucous centrepiece it is not. A soundtrack for a nightcap alone though? Absolutely.

These songs feel ripped from sets you'll most likely never see, as the technical skill of Villalobos conspicuously reminds the listener of the less boring record it could have been.

Gone are the crushing riffs and transitions, replaced with subdued progressions. It's a real blight on much of the record, unable to keep the listener enthralled or interested.

Though not nearly as essential as their first two albums, Long Live finds Atreyu reaching higher than they have in almost a decade.

Though the production lags at times, Wiley's performance overall is still a fitting conclusion to his groundbreaking journey in music.

Carved into Stone is a bit hard to warm up to, but it finds the band reaching out and, in doing so, writing their catchiest material since they snapped our fingers and necks so many moons ago.

The record packs familiar Function trademarks--industrial themes, hissing white noise, acid loops and retro rhythms--but the ideas fall short of reinvigorating the legacy established after Sandwell Disctrict's full-length, Feed Forward, landed in 2010.

Although the album doesn't repeat a verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown formula, it also lacks distinct or memorable riffs.

While the artistry is evident in his picks, Moodymann's execution here could've use a more deft hand.

Where their last record, Black Masses, sped, this record swings.

On By the Fire opener "Hashish," Moore and his trio wholesale borrow the intro, main riff and melody from Sonic Youth's 1998 single "Sunday," while the most poppy and compact track on the LP, "Cantaloupe", freely cops the guitar rhythm of SY's 1992 classic "Sugar Kane." But once Moore becomes tired of repurposing old riffs, noise breakdowns, and tunings, he reverts to simply repeating intros and harmonies across the album's nine tracks and 80 minutes, melding together elements from the sluggish "Calligraphy" and the guileless "Dreamers Work."

Tempest is a mixed bag of ideas at best, many of which would be better served by someone like Tom Waits.

Kadavar attempt to create something that is both memorable and cool here, but despite all its hooks and melodies, Berlin ultimately falls short.

Wrangled lacks ambition.

Wall of Eyes is an album of background music, a cinematic compilation that feels like a collection of songs that just weren’t good enough to be on its predecessor. It’s too jammy, too undercooked, too unedited — an overextended comedown without the requisite high.

Clarity, her debut album, falls short of capturing the breadth of Petras's rarity, excluding a few crystalline moments.

As the ninth addition to the Wilco canon, Star Wars is a vessel for a few impressive tunes, another respectable--if just a little uninspired--step for a band that continues to unapologetically evolve

Likewise checks all the boxes of a "good" album, but it's also a bit boring. It's too much a showcase of Quinlan's lyrical acumen, which is incisive, but the record doesn't strike a visceral chord.

While the band's attempts to recapture their old glory have typically felt like attempts to give fans what they've wanted from them--and the idea that of a bunch of old white men tying their authenticity to their black cultural forbears feels something like an ugly metaphor for this mess of a year--this is the Stones making music for themselves.

The result is a listening experience that demonstrates a capacity for intimacy, but more often acts as an intermission or interruption to an otherwise steady pace.

The result is flat and congealed, lacking danger.