Parts of Two-Way Mirror give me hope for the future, but their seeming inability to hammer out a concrete songwriting method makes me doubt they'll figure it out anytime soon.

Molina and Johnson proves to be inessential listening for fans of either artist, but should prove suitable listening for those of us who want a mild-mannered soundtrack to our lamentations of modern city life.

As a collection of odds and ends, No One’s First… is a necessarily disjointed album. It’s alternately disappointingly simple and refreshingly unique from song to song, torn between country, radio rock and classic Modest Mouse.

This was an interesting direction to go in and it definitely has a lot of potential. But the duo will need to do a better job balancing the synths and the songs to succeed.

Outside of the soaring Retrograde, a prime example of how Pearl Jam has ultimately matured, most of Gigaton shows a band whose collaborative efforts and expertise can still resonate if they open their minds to the challenge.

Ultimately, Marble Skies is a hopscotch of metamorphosizing sounds that can be rewarding for the most part, but only if you can muster the energy to make it so.

Ruins is an affecting, comforting listen, but not one that will imprint itself too vividly in the memory.

If this was a band’s debut album, it would be a nice, pleasant first shot. But with the knowledge of what came before, too much of it sounds toothless or neutered.

In their insistence on trying to mix quirky, quiet electronica with beer-swilling pop, without the two informing each other, Athlete too often fall into a formulaic and predictable model.

At present, their light out-of-the-box exploits feel more like comfort food, but there's no denying that once they develop their experimental ways they'll move out of stagnancy.

Down in the Weeds is at odds with itself—where the band balances music that is ambitious in scope with some of Obert's most nakedly personal work. But just like his complicated and sometimes narcissistic persona, there's a good argument to make about how his over-the-top approach perfectly suits him. That aside, Oberst and his cohorts' generous offering does take them on new, unexplored territory while remaining true to his wry prose.

Despite the wealth of glowing beats and rhymes, AIM would have benefitted from some unpredictability. Arulpragasam's sound is distinctive, but because she never establishes any kind of progression of ideas or strategically unites her songs around a theme, the album remains repetitive instead of cohesive.

What I hear is basically a mildly enjoyable set of songs, whose lackadaisical delivery and spacey major second chords could easily accompany my Sunday afternoon nap.

It's not quite bad enough to be dubbed an honest failure, but it's flaws are too debilitating for me to recommend blowing a tenner on a copy.

he Way We Separate is an undoubtedly intimate and romantic synth pop album that, for better or worse, pulls no tricks on the listener.

Any band that can turn over vocal duties as often as they hold onto them and somehow make all the music sound like their own is a band worth watching, and despite its inconsistency and even its lack of imagination, there are a lot of thrills to be had in this hour.

Devil Music sounds like a compilation of unpolished ideas taken from scrapped recording sessions, and though it highlights The Men at their best it also portrays them as lazy underachievers. And they’re too smart to be labeled as such.

Some the hooks are among the best the band has ever written... [Yet] the 10 songs never feel like an Album so much as it does a collection of songs, more like productive jams from a group of middle-aged friends unwinding or celebrating than actually adding any kind of blues to their songwriting chops.

El Pintor isn’t a rekindling of old fires, more so a chilled, mutual acceptance from a band that is letting things roll as smoothly as can be.

The problem is that Ishibashi isn't idiosyncratic enough to make this a memorable record... That said, he gets it so right on Manchester it's unbelievable.

Notes on a Conditional Form is a fantastic 12 track, 45-minute album. It’s just a shame that The 1975 decided to make it into a 22 track, 80 minute one. There’s certainly enough going on to recommend repeat listens, but the quality level waxes and wanes so much throughout that it won’t take you too long to find your favorites and start returning to just those.

As it stands, Deerhoof seems to have lost its footing a bit with this one.

They show the beginnings of great ideas in almost every song, and a few get the full treatment and stay great all the way through. The good songs are very enjoyable, the rest of the album is, unfortunately, pretty forgettable.

There is, however, a cleaner edge to this version of bedroom rock, but its Neapolitan mixing results in a less organic sound than you feel could have been achieved with a little less of a sharper edge.

CALM is occasionally inspired, sometimes incredibly stupid, and most of all: surprisingly fine.

Although Trev gives Stuart Murdoch's songs a freshness and clarity that is entirely complimentary, the decision to unleash a flurry of TV melodrama string arrangements or flashy showbiz brass on half the songs leads to results that range from tolerable over-egging at best and annoying inanity at worst.

What they’ve given us is an exquisitely polished blur, enjoyable at times, mildly challenging at others, but nothing that you couldn’t feel comfortable piping in as background for the Sunday barbeque with the Petersons.

At its best, it blows Chemical Chords out of the water but at its worst, it's uninspiring and dull.