Background check aside, there isn't much air to breathe for any or one of Cooper's many ideas in a given song, leaving the record as a whole even less of a chance to cohere.

It's easy to see Share the Joy's place in the Vivian Girls discography, but their place in indie rock as a whole is becoming less clear.

A fragmented 12-song album that trends toward the same path that he already spent five albums exploring.

It works fine as a stopgap or as background music. It sounds like license-free 2010s trap, for which there always seems to be a market. But it is so ordinary, so uniquely uninspiring that it makes it difficult to imagine a solo work from Quavo that would truly grip our attention (or our club nights or car stereos).

But if the group has grown deadlier and more dynamic in their five years together, singer Julian Casablancas still struggles as a lyricist.

As ever, Topley-Bird's voice continues to be a strange and beautiful thing, but it's admittedly less strange and less beautiful when framed against this hopelessly warmed over setting.

The album's overall flow and structure is decidedly disjointed, with a scattering of tiny, demo-quality tracks adding virtually nothing to the record.

Though inspired by weightier and more evocative themes [than 20122's Too Beautiful to Work], Animator already feels less memorable-- it seems to constantly evade the listener's grasp.

The majority of the record's new tracks need to either be more focused or show more dynamic range.

This is the Killers' spitball album, the one where they try everything and see what works while Flowers grasps for a relatable tone.

There is nothing on Lily-O to break the spell these musicians have too carefully cast. In other words, there is nothing to get Amidon out of his own head or out of our collective past.

Rather than dismiss Just to Feel Anything as a mistake, perhaps it's better to think of it as a mixed detour, one that some of the band's followers might in fact welcome.

Feeding People's energy is abundant and undeniable, but all over the place on Island Universe.

Department of Disappearance does sound strangely complacent and monochromatic, offering no twists on the technorganic aesthetic he's been plying since Grandaddy were still a bedroom act.

Tellingly, the best songs on Blue Giant are also the simplest, pointing to what this record could and perhaps should have been.

Tales Told lacks the charm of the Seeds' most ebullient singles, and it's certainly no Crocodiles, either.

Where the music in Good Evening manages to mostly please without much compromise, the visual documentation of said music bends over backwards to make itself palatable to only the most fervent of fans.

Homosapien's constant fluctuations between styles means it's a mercurial and somewhat uneven listen.

Fans of mid-fi one-man indie bands and anyone who loved Elbogen's when he was still Say Hi To Your Mom will undoubtedly find things to like about it, but Oohs & Ahs is ultimately a decent record that's weighed down a bit by some puzzling sonics.

Let's hope Magic Chairs is as much terminal as it is transitional, meaning that next time, they'll get all of that grandness right.

Concert albums never sound like the concerts they're supposed to capture, and with a band whose presence can stifle trite conversation like High on Fire's, it's a disservice.

While Cave represents a return to form, the band hasn't recaptured the beauty of early highlights like 'When the Red King Comes' or 'A Dream in Sound.'

Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.

Instead of exploring their sound and growing more dexterous over time, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter have backed themselves into a creative corner on Marble Son--with a sound so austere it becomes tedious instead of heady, tentative instead of revelatory.

Magnetic Man's arrangements may proudly flaunt dance-pop's most universal qualities, but their efforts remain mere gestures so long as their beats continue to stare so resentfully in the opposite direction.

Slipping dissonant, screeching bleeps into a placid, space-age bachelor pad schema seems oddly passive-aggressive, though not enough of either to pass as legitimately interesting.

As it is, the album feels slightly cluttered by a surfeit of dry minutiae that calls for a cutting room floor of its own.

Houdini sounds like an attempt to escape from the predicament of the sophomore album, making more nuanced use of orchestration and sticking with a comfortingly sweet and naïve tone while also expanding its perspective.