It's not the first time a band of this stature chooses to find their confidence by taking it slow. But neither is it too daring or too unhinged; in fact, sans the slower, more methodical tempos, many of the songs still fall under their common pairing of doo-wop chord progressions and piercing guitars. So much of your appreciation for Tranquility may depend on how much you can stomach Turner's interpretative dance.

This retro carnival is a trip, but it’s also a downright mess riddled with poor songwriting choices that are disguised as clever.

The whole of it is too calculated, even if they occasionally hit the mark with an obvious attention to craft which, to be fair, certainly counts for something.

Hang appears as an album of ambition that outdoes itself so spectacularly that it appears as a jazzed up, Disney-esque caricature of its own end product.

As it stands, the best that could be said about Ceremonials is that it's a pleasant enough listen that will change absolutely nobody's mind about Florence and her machine.

This brand of thoughtful ambient music is certainly not for everyone, but those willing to take the plunge may just come away surprised. After all, being perhaps too original and ambitious is often better than being trite and derivative.

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.

At once droll and melancholic, Cigarettes After Sex struggles to earn the aural beauty it desperately seeks.

There are some nice elements here: the vocals and vocal harmonies are reasonably solid, but they're trapped underneath layers of, well, noise.

By the end of the album, the technical ability of Hindman and the lyricism of Versprille feel exhausted, gargled, and outsized by the very same influences that they try to honor in their thoroughly hackneyed attention to 80s Cocteau Twins-inspired rock.

The intensity of its stylistic approach leaves it feeling nothing short of a musical dissertation as it side-steps melodies, bridges and verses from the get-go.

There's nothing particularly grating about their gentle, country-pop stylings—most of which deal with themes such as nature, gratitude, and fleeting time. And these are all worthy topics to explore—except that every song sounds so gosh darn wholesome that it's as if they discourage against any deeper introspection.

They write some good tunes, and they have some appropriately strident abuse for lyrics. But there’s not enough for an album.

The album is at its most successful when Lanegan allows these alien textures [electronics, atmospheric guitar] to take a more prominent role in his songs, providing a counterfoil to his gravelly rock vocals. Elsewhere the songs meander too much for the album to coalesce into a convincing statement.

Despite the amount of effort that appears at the surface, from the several websites to the layered and unique production, Dreamland is a project that’s as momentarily annoying as it is infinitely forgettable.

With ambition and expectation clearly larger than its execution, (K)no(W)here relies too heavily on its “concept” to drive itself, music being its afterthought and, ultimately, its title only communicates its direction.

The Menzingers established themselves as a group interested in moving forward—even if they wrote about those high school days. Hello Exile fails to follow through on that promise.

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.

The album sounds familiar far too quickly. [But] when Interstellar hits, however, it hits hard.

Each track in its own right has nothing inherently wrong with it, but put eleven of them together and it’s all a little one-dimensional.

This album simply lacks the impact that Vanderslice's trademark sound usually packs in abundance. The bare bones of his usually excellent songwriting are there, but it's more constrained by the orchestration than set free.

Despite its moments of lucid release, Minor Victories mostly likes to loom in the shadows with hardly any form at all.

At his best, Walsch’s lyricism threads the line between clichés and anecdotal details with ease. There are exceptions to this, as Hesitation captures the curdling of a long-distance relationship superbly. It might be his best set of lyrics. It’s a disappointment that it’s situated between a handful of bored, washed-out emo tunes that hold I Won’t Care How You Remember Me down.

These songs are all, for the most part, perfectly adequate, but we've heard better and stronger songs from Sadier before. It's not so much a sucker punch as a blunt disappointment from an artist who we know can do so much better.

Please Be Mine is a charming record that remains engaging and consistently pleasant, but you have to feel that there’s another gear in Molly Burch’s engine-room that could get the most out of her prodigious talent.

There are times when their elementary to songwriting can make them look as if they’re stuck in their teenage angst, which is expected considering their genuinely fun play on nostalgia is quite detrimental to their brand. But the tunes do stack up, and when it’s delivered with this much conviction, that’s reason enough to rekindle that loyal, longstanding friendship with their most ardent fans.

There may be nothing exactly wrong with Good Arrows as a record, and I’m sure that in a different time and situation it would be considered a respectable if shallow pop record.

On their latest album, The New Abnormal, The Strokes have mirrored the career of Beck, offering a mimetic approximation of music they think people want, instead of music generated from their raw, inner demons or whatever fueled them on Is This It.