After 35 minutes filled with one kinetic power-chord to the next with the littlest variation, Typhoons spreads itself too thin.

Noctourniquet, while not completely successful, finds The Mars Volta at their most pop and their most reasonable.

If more is to come, it should bring with it a great deal of anticipation - Colour Trip has a great deal of promise about it, and that, it seems, is hard to miss, even through all the noise.

The 2nd Law is a love-it-or-hate-it record. It contains some of the best songs Muse has done in recent memory, but also the worst

Chugging, jangling versions of "Honey I Miss You" and "Life in Vain" are tuneful and serviceable, stripping out Johnston's idiosyncratic touch while faithfully aligning to his simple, primal songwriting style. On the other hand, their version of Good Morning You sticks to the original's scrappy melodicism, and at a minute and a half, doesn't overstate its welcome.

It’s another intriguing entry into the Charli XCX canon, even if it does feel like more of a stopgap than anything. But hey, right now, that’s okay too.

White Stuff is a welcome return even if it is uneven.

It’s catchy, it’s energetic, and it makes you move--all plusses in my book. That said, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a record that sounds so much like everything else.

Maybe it’s a struggle to really get your teeth into Mosquito because of the track listing; the three song dry patch after Mosquito is a huge problem considering the ease these days of being able to find something more interesting to listen to.

At times it can be strikingly absurdist, the benefit of a frontman who knows how to insert humor naturally into the dourest of settings. But Higgs also loses sight of his own lyrical virtuosity when keeping with the band’s regurgitated precision-playing. Everything Everything continue to convey their bottomless ideas effortlessly, chained to the rhythm, even if their dizzying dance is beginning to show signs of fatigue.

On Queen, Nicki spends a lot of time ordering beheadings--which are fun, but get old quick--rather than showing us why she is and should be queen. Here's to hoping the next album gives us a more earnest, more raw glimpse of the head that wears the crown.

These songs just lack that certain oomph to separate Free Energy from the thousands of groups who have sang about girls before.

It's terrific fun while it lasts, and Moon's knowingly gawky charms just about manage to stave off any lingering Jimmy Ray (remember him?) related doubts, but the general lack of content does offer fairly compromised value for money, and raises questions as to if he'll be able to think of ways to expand his repertoire without ruining the central conceit, or just end up being an oddball one trick pony.

For a first try, the Black Keys do a decent enough job providing the backbone upon which this collection of rappers can spit and strut, but the actual musical output is overshadowed by the concept of this collaboration, and that is Blakroc’s biggest problem.

It gets a bit boring, a bit sleepy, and altogether, it's a bit forgettable.... But, you know? It sounds good doing it. That has to count for something.

Ha Ha Sound is occasionally brilliant, often adequate and, on some tracks, so bizarrely irritating that the mind boggles at who Broadcast imagine would actually be interested in hearing them. So, in summation, an almost essential album of largely inessential tracks.

The album's biggest hindrance is a lack of ruthlessness at crucial moments, eschewing cohesion for broad-stroke stabs at too many genres.

Rolling Blackouts is a Technicolor, kaleidoscopic riot of a record but, put in context, it can't fail to be tinged with a hint of disappointment. There's a real risk that The Go! Team may have painted themselves into a corner (albeit with various shades of eye-wateringly luminous paint); it will be intriguing to see where they go from here.

The Thermals promised that their next album would be “loud, fast, incredibly scary and undeniably catchy.” The album we received, Desperate Ground, succeeds in most of these characteristics, but only at the bare minimum level.

Gutter Rainbows instead hovers between a mainstream and an indie vibe, embracing neither and potentially isolating both audiences.

Some of Wanderer is, frankly, quite dull, even if her irresolute darkness can still engulf your senses upon closer inspection. Marshall keeps us at a certain distance as if gazing into an incomplete photo book, leaving too many empty spaces to fill when there are so many other stories to tell.

It’s never a bad record, or even less than listenable--the individuals behind it have more than enough good taste and sense for that to happen--but it is a mildly disappointing one, considering the sheer potential of those early releases.

Craft's vocals feel like they were sent through a french fryer, cooked to a crisp. The result is, like the music that backs him, a voice that is merely functional, an approximation that falls well short of its influences. Craft's first album had swagger— hopefully, he gets it back.

Crawling Up The Stairs has strong riptides that have no qualms over carrying you away, but if you embrace them you may be pleasurably surprised.

Perhaps the best way to approach Theatre Is Evil is not even as an album, but rather a collection of songs--all fairly similar but often good, sometimes very much so.

Dancer Equired trounces for thirty minutes in the same formulaic way as before: one-note exuberance, monotone instrumentation, and washed out pop hooks. Granted, it features some of their strongest songs to date, but it's not enough to salvage the exhaustive, pouring reverberation.

Imperium is more homage than innovation, and while it further preserves the integrity of early indie rock, it only hints that Blouse is more than a revival act.

Kintsugi is unfortunately as bland as they come, and no good amount of mourning, sonorous guitars can excuse the fact it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a relatable common ground in Gibbard’s repressed impulses.