It's more focused than he's been in awhile, and while you couldn't call an album featuring 2Chainz, Rick Ross, Meek Mill, Lil Wayne (twice), Future, Young Jeezy, Chris Brown, Common, Pusha T, Jamie Foxx, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar and more "lean," Jesus Piece is less all-over-the-place than The R.E.D. Album.

Instead of dividing the album into a house-tempo disc and a downtempo disc, Coles alternates between the two modes. But after five or six tracks, the strategy becomes as predictable as her by-the-book chord progressions; the fast/slow/fast/slow sequencing kills any kind of momentum the album might otherwise have achieved.

It’s the slowest and least cluttered instrumentals that feel here the most effectively expansive, capturing the scope of the quartet’s chosen themes without collapsing beneath symbolism and meaning-making.

The political lyrics are the most troublesome.

Player Piano finds Hawk more concentrated and economical than ever. Unfortunately, it comes off more like complacency than conviction, that Hawk's either holding back on us, misreading his true strengths, not recognizing the need to rise to the occasion, or possibly all three.

To the familiar, Robin Guthrie has already proven he's better than this; to the uninitiated, Imperial offers a muted exposition of his talents.

Although he's now logged as much time as a solo artist as he did with his former band, Isbell sounds he's still finding his voice.

In Pagans in Vegas, humans and machines exist in a binary relationship. The reality is both more nuanced and fertile than that.

Asking his band to change course in a dramatic fashion after nearly three decades together might be too much. But allowing themselves to get away from the tried and true could give the Charlatans a nice creative jolt to keep them going for another 30 years.

In spite of their surprising stability, this iteration of the Fall is strangely lacking in audible camaraderie, and on Sub-Lingual Tablet, the distance between frontman and backing band feels more pronounced than ever.

Unfortunately, this humanity doesn't translate to the music. The performances are flawless, but overly so.

The results still sound as slickly produced and hedge-betting as any actual Foo Fighters album.

At times, the maturation feels forced; the more adventurous moments here are experimental only for such a high-profile group, and they don't play to Gibbard's sentimental, word-weighing strengths.

To navigate successfully around a Kid Cudi album, then, is to get really good at squinting at the periphery.

It's a shame that Falkous is playing to the cheap seats on The Plot Against Common Sense.

Challengers tracks end with uncharacteristic whimpers instead of bangs.

Folding Time serves as a stopgap for an aging sound without a firm grasp on its bearings. Should Sepalcure continue writing from their fixed point, they'll have to project further and further from its origin.

The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light is baggy and unfocused. If he wants to sell a promise of salvation, he needs a better story to tell.

While many of those artists have since released their finest work to date by stripping away a lot of the dissonance, the same can't be said of Dancer Equired. Though revealing, this probably wasn't the right set of songs to unveil in the process.

As strictly a listening experience, though, it's a decent document of a bunch of relatively unexceptional guys who willed themselves to greatness for a couple of years there but couldn't stop being relatively unexceptional.

The best Jeezy music often exploited how far he could go with memorable ad libs and punchlines, a triumphant kind of simplicity. Here that gets muted to muddied results.

Bottom line is that if you've got the old albums and you want to experience Gang of Four again, better to shell out for the actual show than for the disc that approximates it.

Su might not have the highest aspirations, but minor dreams can still compel a listener; Sincerely Yours just needed to find better modes of expression.

Pastiche is the entire point of Lobes. Maybe its period recreations provide some surface pleasures, but it’s not enough to erase the suspicion that We Are Scientists have turned into indie-rock journeymen, content to dabble in sounds and styles that have just fallen out of fashion.

I'm hard-pressed to find a song that's more interesting at its three-minute mark than it is after 10 seconds: 2:54 exposes a band that knows how to make a good first impression but not a lasting one.

Set aside the negligible opening and closing tracks, and Sol Invictus has just eight tracks spanning 34 minutes, an underwhelming running time considering how long Faith No More have been away. Such brevity could be overlooked if Sol Invictus was accompanied by a significant shift in the band’s sound, but many of these songs feel like retreads.

Shifty Adventures feels more like a collection of gadgets than songs.

The dividedness of the record is especially plain here. Acher generally gets calm and luscious music, and then all hell breaks loose whenever Dose shows up.

Much of Curiosity finds Wampire a bit too comfortable and self-satisfied within their washed-out aesthetic, and the premeditated haziness of the recordings--and obvious attempts to weird them up, through squeaky synth settings and effete vocal tics--ultimately undermines the duo’s songwriting ambitions.

While its standout tracks are strong enough to ensure Phantogram maintains its current altitude, there are a lot of places to turn to for this sort of thing these days, and this album ultimately underwhelms next to the pure-pop punch of Haim, the cutting lyricism of Lorde, or the radiant grandeur of Chvrches.

Editors sound like an earnest rock band who grew up loving the same bands as the current batch of revivalists, but beyond the workmanlike interpretations of their heroes, it's hard to swallow.

There are easily as many misses as hits on the album, and 14 tracks is probably about seven tracks too long.

Summer Sun is pleasant, if nothing else, but that's such a loaded word for an album that clearly aspires to (and ought to be) so much more than it accomplishes.

It’s an enjoyable and subtly diverse listen only if you give it your undivided attention.

What's Between provides some compelling glimpses at Kelly's cimmerian headspace, but knowing that he possesses the ability and the vision to flesh out his own ideas, it's hard not to be left wanting more.

Lupine Howl essentially take the bluesiest moments of past Spiritualized records and use them as the starting point for their sound, placing the emphasis on gritty rock rave-ups, and adding another Marshall to the stack for every orchestra member Pierce hired for Let It Come Down.

Master and Everyone is a solid collection of rather thin songs that never quite sound intimate; songs that meant something profound to someone-- but always, it seems, someone else.

These slower songs aren't just mellow, they're mundane, and their inclusion leaves Innocence feeling lopsided, a oft-killer rock record with nasty balladry habit.

Talk That Talk tries too hard to send a more one-dimensional message and ends up falling flat: Rihanna's obviously going for sexy here, but her music's at its most alluring when she's blissed out in her own reverie, not taking the time to spell it all out for us.

So really, it doesn't turn out all that different from the most recent Earlimart, Beachwood Sparks, or Jason Lytle records: perfectly okay, not pushy enough to be even remotely unpleasant, and in a way you're hoping it's better.

You don't often come across a modern album that sounds so damn old.

At times, it sounds far less like his beloved Boys of Summer 2009 so much as a simplified homage to Kompakt's more populist acts, electronic's version of a neophyte performing solo acoustic versions of Zeppelin or Radiohead at a college bar.

The individual entries on Grinderman 2 are all over the map quality-wise, from inert and utterly ignorable... to half-brilliant reframings of pretty singular material.

Paradox exists as a conduit between a dreamed history and a fantasized future, a place formed of nothing more than fragments that evoke a past that seems more mysterious than the present. If the end result is as light as a feather or as memorable as a breeze, that’s also the point.

Just as "Viva" did an admirable job of troubleshooting the band's lazy weaknesses while expanding their sound, Prospekt's March offers a truncated version of their svelte and marginally progressive new formula.

Gold comes off as clean, shiny, and over-the-top as Elliott Smith's XO, replete with strings, horns, and female backup singers. I double-checked the credits. Jon Brion wasn't listed.

Hotel Morgen may be beautifully produced, but despite its expert attention to detail, few of these tracks truly engage in the way they seem meant to.

Some of these remixes are truly excellent, and some of them are disastrous.

What’s missing, though, is the central promise of a supergroup: the thrill of hearing established musicians in a truly different context. Minor Victories’ lineup may stem from different circles, but their approaches are so complementary that there’s rarely any tension or surprise.

As so often when it comes to dance-music full-lengths, Bias' good ideas get lost in the sea of makeweight stuff, and his attempt to please just about everyone results in a frustratingly spotty album.

It's a precision attack, and as lofty and lovely as these tunes can sound, even their note-perfect nature seems to hold the listener at arm's length. But the real distance in the record is generated by Kurosky's lyrics, a series of clipped phrases and red herrings loosely compiled in the shape of story-songs, rich in imagistic detail but short in the personals department.

It's business as usual: spastic pounding, warp-speed scalar runs, and various math-rock feats of strength.

Mosquito is not without highlights, but it requires some patience to unearth them, because when this record is bad, it's loudly, brazenly bad.

That they don't treat ambient as empty-headed fluff for relaxation is laudable, but it also doesn't make Ursprung any less of a record for a self-selecting coterie of sound-art aficionados.

He is most effective when he harshly distorts his vocals to create texture, and in the company of others he can serve as a welcome change of pace.

The discrepancy on Bootlegs between studious songcraft and rambunctious execution occasionally sounds distractingly self-conscious, but Lerche still sounds better here for sounding so unguarded and loose.

It's not until Magnificent Fiend's closing trio of seven-minute behemoths that Howlin Rain find traction, though it's the band's willingness to tweak its grand appropriations, rather than the tracks' epic lengths, that helps the songs stick.

Unlike other Bowie live albums, this doesn’t document a specific tour or phase. It’s just a quiet, pleasant footnote to a busy era.

Hints of humor are often symbolized in Scholefield's artworks, but here they have an unbalancing effect, only serving to detract from the portentous musical renderings of the uneasy symbiosis between digital glitch and the natural world.

A lot of bands venture close to soft-rock territory and come out unscathed. Trembling Blue Stars aren't so lucky.

An unbowed creative spirit ran through Perry’s gloriously multifarious career; on King Perry he sounds frustratingly submissive, a passing supplicant in someone else’s court rather than a king on his throne.

There are shards of intriguing ideas buried in the album’s plodding acoustics and garish rock-pop confections, but Fletcher fails to excavate them.

Their spit-polished full-length is a throwback to the sort of CD-era pop rock album everyone remembers buying at least once: The one with the re-recorded single surrounded mostly by less-developed, vaguely similar stuff.

For better and for worse, there is nothing cringe-inducing on It's Decided; the record mostly sounds like I should remember to tip my barista.

Sloppiness has crept into their once-perfect attack, and there is a certain any-era-of-modern-rock, unstuck-in-time vibe to the production choices and songwriting.

While Milagres may sound like a lot of music fans' favorite bands, it's hard to imagine anyone preferring this record to the real deal.

If it’s a bid for dance-pop stardom, then the big singles—finely crafted though they are—are too few, too timid. If it’s meant as a deep-house long-player, it’s paddling in the shallow end.

THINK LATER is full of homogeneous trap-pop ballads devoted to one-dimensional introspection.

This is the sound of an ever-curious, shape-shifting band finally finding the confidence to tell us who they really are. But they are not telling us anything we didn’t already know.

The sound is as warm and rich as could be expected from a craftsman of this caliber--David Piltch's upright bass tone alone should be bottled and sold to the highest bidder--but musically and melodically Civilians falls short of making much of a connection itself.

Songs rarely pick up from a crawl. Sustained guitar chords fan out and crush whatever momentum the band gets going. The bursts of distortion that colored If Children are almost pornographically expanded.

Imagin shines whenever it isn't contorting to fit preconceived notions of format.

Thankfully, the execution often surpasses the ideas—these are intricate tracks, twinkling through layers of texture. But they get clogged in swerves and side-steps.

The Liam-written songs are largely a drag. ... But a few of Liam’s clunkers are elevated in the live format, helped greatly by the Hull crowd, recorded high in the mix.

For a band that once stood out for its too-much-ness, Walk the River now gives us too much of the wrong things: too many midtempo songs, too many minor-key acoustic strums, too many codas that outstay their welcome without really connecting.

Dinosaurs is a testament to how 90s alt-rock angst can translate meaningfully to middle age.

A record whose middling between arena aspirations and headphones listening feels less of a fusion and more of a compromise.

Too many songs on Taiga come across as filler—too small and formulaic to impress at "taiga" scale, but too leaden to reach anthemic heights.

High Road feels strained, scattershot, and loaded with tension, like someone trying to portray freedom and free-spiritedness–even a recovered sense of identity–who isn’t quite there yet.

In Dva, Emika may be aspiring to a larger scale of pop, but for the most part this only serves to amplify her flaws.

As a whole, Eats Darkness feels haphazard in a way that shades into self-indulgence.

Cosentino sounds strongest when she gives herself permission to veer from her influences and find her own voice.

Given what he’s proven capable of as part of his main gig, though, it’s hard not to wish that, when left to his own devices, he made more of an effort to get outside of his own head.

Where overbearing arrangements don’t get in the way, a cloying sentimentality does.

Night is ultimately hamstrung by a personality vacuum. It's easy enough to enjoy Night while it's playing, but even after so many listens, it's hard to care about it.

Despite radio-ready production and commercial hooks that tell us we're hearing pop, it can take some hours of intense listening before most of these tunes ever stick in the head, and there's little to no emotional investment.

There are too many special effects surrounding the messages-- Craig B's penchant for preadolescent vocals included.

They're the opening band you actually kinda enjoyed even though you showed up too early by mistake, the album you half remember liking when it was playing in a friend's car.

For all its promises of a leisurely, good time, A Productive Cough plays like a quarantine.

With Dark Red, he’s taken another turn, slipping out of the pop-shadowing path he was on in exchange for something darker and bolder, but compromised by its own disorder.

At best, the verses, bridges, and instrumental passages feel custodial, doing little to disturb the flow so that the chorus can deliver a proper dynamic boost. Mostly, they just feel like Guards killing time, and Follin's power-pop Madlibs make the 45 minutes of In Guards We Trust feel significantly longer.

While the songwriting may be on autopilot, Gallagher’s decision to self-produce Chasing Yesterday was a smart one, resulting in an album that feels both intimate and expansive.

As the tempos stagnate towards the album’s back end, though, the affective force of her vocals loses potency—particularly on the pedestrian ballad "One Day"--and all the runs in the world can't distract from the sameness.

The distraction of blatant unoriginality aside, Rare Forms' biggest problem is its lack of compelling structure, with a whole lot of atmospheric haze.

Oh! Mighty Engine is endlessly pleasant but oddly faceless, a record strangely free of feeling.

Like Blackalicious' recent The Craft, it displays a real hard-earned competency, something a decade of recording together will get you. But the lyrics lack transcendence or resonance.

With El Pintor, Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol; it’s a sad notion for anyone who once held this band’s music dear to their hearts, but taking into account what came before, it’s a miracle that Interpol still exist in this capacity at all.

Most of the songs are solid, with the possible exception of the slackened "Keep Still", but none after the first has much capacity to surprise us or deepen the palette.