The murky production sucks out some of the dynamics, but a few extra-spirited tracks push above the rest.

Through it all they maintain a charmingly chiming and cheery vibe that's probably the closest humans can get to making elf music.

Those who go to genuine underground parties every weekend will find it a bit lame, but considering the work of his fellow chart-topping populists, you could do a lot worse.

You'll find great boy-girl vocals, muted guitars and quiet but hooky pop.

The album starts strong with classic Kylie banger Into The Blue, but it suddenly succumbs to faddishness on nondescript disco tune Sexy Love and the weirdly dated dubstep track Sexercize.

For fans of mid-tempo 90s R&B hungry from something new, Keyshia Cole is about as close as it gets to Real Love.

For an album that otherwise condemns the materialism and narcissism of the modern world, Everything Now works best when it practises what it preaches: block out the superfluous noise for direct appeals to the heart.

On indie pop cut One True Love and the rollicking I Need An Angel, Wisenbaker’s gritty voice scuffs up Goodman’s buoyant one – a good thing, since she can sound static at times. That said, she’s sorely missed on the jangling track Nineties, in which Wisenbaker takes sole vocal duties but lacks the charisma to pull it off.

The eclectic approach was often messy but also fresh, which can't be said for their middling sixth LP.

SZA’s lyrics are impressionistic, and her melodies arrive in fits and spurts.

While the rhythms may seem like invitations to dance--or at least sway--the lyrics are almost uniformly bleak, making Pale Fire a late contender for saddest album of the year.

His strength has always been his versatility: he combines old-school rap with a solid singing voice and an ability to play guitar and drums. Separating these elements is a curious strategy, though his verbal and instrumental talents still show up on both sides.

The songs here are saturated with detail: ornate swirls of neoclassical lyrics, melodies that slither, then loop in on themselves, layers of sonic textures and feral noises. And too often, tunes with good bones cave in under that weight.

The novelty disco elements are balanced by enough rock-solid grooves that the cheesier moments don’t stink up the whole thing.

The most surprising letdown, though, is vocalist Luke Top's decision to sing mainly in English, which only serves to highlight his shortcomings as a lyricist and emphasize an unfortunate nasal quality that didn't seem nearly as annoying in Hebrew.

Not amazing, but steady and fun all the same.

Unfortunately Summers’s voice and persona just don’t suit this material.

It's often a little too wacky and silly for its own good, but overall Personal Computer is a fun collection of weirdo funk pop.

Born Ruffians’ sophomore album is a cohesive, occasionally repetitious helping of choppy indie pop, almost brutalist in its minimalist instrumentation and dry-as-a-bone production.

Jackrabbit is smart, charming and ambitious. But it would have been a lot more concise without the filler tracks in the middle.

The album wouldn't be satisfying if it was just another version of Freudian. But Caesar calls the album an experiment, and that's often what it feels like. He's still figuring it all out.

An album that's high on good intentions but low on spark.

Three albums and 700 guitar solos later, they sound like a band becoming a bit too comfortable in their niche.

It's a better album than their last, and diehard fans should be satisfied, but it's not going to get the rest of us very excited.

LeBlanc's garbled vocal delivery only serves to obscure weak lyrics.

Haze is positioning herself as a top 40 infiltrator, which is fine, but she’s also diluted her uniqueness.

This lengthy offering comes complete with a detailed manifesto about its inspiration. Too bad it reads like your kid brother’s first ’shroom trip.

Awkward and embarrassing, the mixtape as a whole feels like a PR move to get you to listen to Nash-free embedded song Silly by new protégé Casha.

That free-form fury is a critique of the tendency to look for precise meaning in music, thereby devaluing the visceral and the emotional. But the most menacing part is the words uttered at the beginning.

A few songs recall the off-the-cuff, askew rock 'n' roll they built their name on. Others, though, are barely listenable.

Aussie collective Architecture in Helsinki return with an awkward mess of shrieking faux island riddims and embarrassing rump-shaking elasto-funk.

One Love goes surprisingly deep, but an instrumental companion disc would’ve been a nice touch.

Charlotte Gainsbourg's Beck-produced IRM was a stellar sleeper gem of an album, but this follow-up sounds tossed together.

O’Connor’s impassioned delivery elevates the most middling melodies and predictable rhymes.

Yes, all the songs are nice and pretty, but there's something missing. It could be that in 2016 there's palpable nostalgia for mid-2000s indie rock (see Wolf Parade reunion tour). But it's the actual music from a decade ago that fans are yearning for, not necessarily the newest versions of the bands themselves.

If you're only into the band for the music, then this will be a solid purchase – it's far more polished and focused than Songs About Jane. Lyrically, though, this album gets tired fast.

It could have worked, but the dated production style bogs it down.

The lyrics are brutal.

While Alone is a big ol’ mishmash of varying quality, it is, for the time being, the closest any of us will get to Cuomo’s former songwriting charm.

Selway sounds like a space-age Badly Drawn Boy, only less lovable. His melodies are simplistic, his lyrics amateurish. If he weren't in the band, it'd be easy to write him off as a Radiohead rip-off.

Overall this is a testament to Wilson's endless creativity.

While it may not stand up to the rest of Hatebreed’s canon, it does a great job of promoting some smaller acts that the average fan may not be aware of, and is a must-have for those antsy for new material.

Production, shared by J, Young Chop and Mike WiLL Made-It among others, at times subtly nods to the menacing beats of early Three 6 Mafia but is otherwise bland.

The few folksier, guitar-plucked numbers, however, are a touch formulaic and over-familiar.

This is fairly arm's-length music--more about beat and texture than emotional confessionals.

With an emphasis on covers, the overall mood is frustratingly lighter than Winehouse's two studio LPs. It's missing the pointed wit, energy and hard-fought candour that marked her best material, but her considerable vocal swagger is unmistakable.

It comes off sounding like a transitional recording, but with Son Volt any change is welcome.

Diamond's song selection will hardly shake anyone's world – two each by the Beatles and Randy Newman – but he has the vocal power to make many cuts his own.

Emotionally raw, [Dirty Laundry is] far more intimate than her sexier songs, proving that her best recipe for success is baring her soul rather than her bedroom secrets.

Edmonton’s the Faunts have livened up on the punctuation-happy Feel.Love.Thinking.Of., moving away from the floating dreamscape world of their filmic M4 EP.

He’s a competent emcee, especially when speaking about the struggles of young African Americans, but he’s in need of a good producer to rein him in.

On the whole, L-Shaped Man feels like a boring exercise: a band performing post-punk idolatry (Root Of The World could pass for poppier Public Image Ltd.) instead of bothering to try anything new.

Too often Bloc Party aim for an overly expansive epic Coldplay quality that compromises the focus of their songwriting.

Reanimation never sounded so lifeless.

While half the fun is spotting the differences between the original and the remake, Where Have You Been All My Life? is also an excellent intro to Villagers, a summary of five years in one album.

Gucci's head-down focus on honing his signature sound is admirable, but the monosyllabic stuntin' gets old fast, and flashes of lyrical or melodic invention are scant. Disappointing coming from a man with an ice cream cone face tattoo.

It appears Patti Smith could've benefited from an outside observer when choosing songs.

The album is laden with a nostalgic longing that’s never as compelling as the cinematic leanings.

It’s refined, poised, sweater-and-scarf music to settle down with in advance of winter’s messy hysteria.

There's enough decent material on Sawdust to exempt Brandon Flowers and his Vegas boys from cynical gap-filler accusations.

Sadly, Talk About Body has the flat, dated electro-pop sound of Le Tigre, who are still a few years away from needing a rebirth.

It's wrapped in a confused concept--future lovers (the album title's characters) under siege by some kind of dystopian oppression--but several tunes will surely ignite stadium masses.

The surprising question about the new recording by the RZA as alter ego Bobby Digital is not whether the outlandish masked get-ups, goofy comic strip scenarios and uninspired rhymes will undermine his credibility as the Wu Tang overlord, but whether he’s lost his production touch.

G. Love sounds at home pouring his heart out about his grandmother and making bong-smoker anthems, but a few numbers sound clichéd.

Pagans In Vegas may not be the strongest entry in the Metric canon, but the juxtaposition of Emily Haines's robot-girl vocals and pointed lyrics with dark yet hooky melodies remains a winning combination.

The production is much bigger, and his songwriting more assertive and hook-heavy. Unfortunately, the awkward charm and intimacy of his early efforts are missed.

Much of his old work still sounds more vital.

It's a beautiful record, but perhaps not the evolution expected after a four-year break.

It sounds like the producers are all competing to drum up the best variation on Ciara's patented Crunk N' B theme.

Some of the hunger and electricity he displayed in his pre-prison era seems to have diminished. This is something to tide people over until his next record, not an artistic statement by any means.

Grainger and Keeler are now more than six years into their reunion, but it’s still hard to listen to these songs without making knee-jerk comparisons to their early work (which, let’s face it, offered more thrills). That being said, Outrage! Is Now shows that they’ve shifted into a new phase of their career – one in which they’ve honed their craft and matured into seasoned pros.

A pretty lightweight disc.

Woomble... shows an innate inability to keep pace, vocally and emotionally, with the thrusting guitars, driving drums and push toward intensity the band bids for.

This album is back-to-basics rock and soul; you won’t find any further ploys to appease contemporary audiences, and therein lies its charm.

Ward's writing--though universal and singalongable--sometimes suffers from vagueness and clichéd rhymes. He should have a bit more faith in his audience, because Hope is most interesting when it strays a little from this formula.

The tunes mostly stick to a low-tempo, shuffling formula, though Bridges gets a chance to stretch a bit in a few scattershot moments of idiosyncrasy.

While a couple of catchy turns of phrase compensate for some elementary rhymes, there aren't enough hooks to make the songs memorable.

More for the dedicated convert than the curious.

Kasher has zero ability to or interest in dialing down his drama and giving Cursive’s highbrow emo rock room to breathe.

The sparse songs are free of drums, bass, riffs and obvious choruses, and are often pushed along by just two, sometimes three, chords.

Her 11th album is full of potential hits (and not too many boring mid-tempo plodders). Unfortunately, there's nothing quite as catchy here as 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head,' although a few tracks come close.

Different Gear, Still Speeding is rife with the catchy, strum-intensive songs and nasal John Lennon impression the band was first known for.

It’s refreshing to hear O sing so delicately--a contrast to the over-the-top persona of her slick main gig--we wish she’d let the heartbreak linger a few moments longer.

The pitch-correction software is alive and well even on this record.... This glaring inconsistency is the least of BP3’s missteps.

[The] fourth LP is lazy through and through despite throwing up waves of explosive sex-and-death rock and roll.

Sadly, co-executive producer Erick Sermon is behind many tracks, and his are the most conventional and weakest of the bunch.

Not every song succeeds, and the best moments tend to be the danciest.

Overall, Hard Candy sounds a bit too much like Madonna’s trying to catch up with the American R&B princesses. Having said that, she holds her own for the most part, and when her own voice shines through, she reminds us why she’s outlasted so many.

The Kooks seem unable to get beyond the Brit-rock blueprint.

At 19 tracks, LAX is bloated and uneven, more often than not marked by weak beats and uninspired appearances. The Game’s skill and wit alone save this from being a complete disaster.

They've made a sophisticated, thinking listener's indie-pop record.

Love 2, their sixth studio album, continues on this path, though its empty lyrics and overall cheesiness do grate.

In the end, Horses is another addition to a catalogue short on standouts.

Tensnake mostly favours brisk tempos, though the sultry ballad 58bpm makes you wish he slowed the pace more often.

Each song is full of sonic acrobatics--sometimes glimmering, other times glitchy, but it's Weaver's voice that provides the heart and soul.

The result is tunes that are pleasant more often than arresting, tailor-made for playing quietly in the kitchen.

The concept's fine, but the results are more self-indulgent and boring than challenging. For Sonic Youth obsessives only.

Skrillex-produced banger Go Off, Blaqstarr-assisted Bird Song and Visa are solid electro-rap party jams that also reference some of her past hits, while low-key dancehall track Foreign Friend and clubby Fly Pirate are among the handful of cuts that get stuck in filler territory.