Nocturnes finds her settling on one that aspires to the distance of Saint Etienne's Sarah Cracknell or Sophie Ellis-Bextor. She’s not quite there, and when her approach doesn’t work, it really doesn’t. Nocturnes is a big improvement over Hands, though, where even the biggest singles' hooks were made of saccharine, not sugar.

It makes you feel like you are in on a longstanding inside joke with an old friend. Even if the joke is super dumb and at times problematic, it is strangely comforting to know that the guy responsible hasn’t changed one iota.

Pale Fire doesn't command your attention so much as wait patiently until it drifts into your view and then goes away.

While the record is far from a failure, Bishop Allen's studio revisionism also falls short of offering anything substantially new to much of the EP material.

It is a painfully raw, emotionally generous, politically charged, intensely intelligent, sometimes unlistenable album.

After initially promising a return to form, 50 doesn't have the ability or initiative to hold the listener's interest over the long run.

Trap or Die 3 offers real reminders of Jeezy’s greatness, then, something Church in These Streets couldn’t claim. But some of these songs just sound terrible.

Alone for the First Time is the furthest he's pushed himself, and the growing pains on the album can be chalked up to the strain of trying new things, a kind of adolescent awkwardness that shows signs of maturing into something sophisticated and unique.

This is a record with a handful of standout songs struggling and straining against one another after being crammed into the standard album format.

Sonically rich but melodically staid, Corporate World ultimately brings to mind Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s extramusical affairs: alluring at first, but a bit wanting under the surface.

Compelling... [Yet] Forever So's resolutely overcast vibe grows a touch dreary around the three-quarter mark; Husky's tempos tend toward the deliberate, and they're most comfortable hanging out in a minor key, but after nine or 10 fairly maudlin affairs in a row, you may find yourself longing for a little respite.

The best that can be said of Defend Yourself is that it isn't embarrassing; they didn't lose the plot like the Pixies, and it's better than The Sebadoh simply because they got out of that L.A. studio and back to their roots. But it also doesn't add anything to the story or feel like it needs to exist.

Quasi are more turbulent in spirit, especially here on Mole City, a wayward, asymmetrical double album that sees them returning to the two-piece format after a period with Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme.

Classics is more varied in texture and tempo and tone than its predecessor. But aside from "Lex", a pretty obvious "Seventeen Years" rehash, and "Wildcat", which samples actual fucking panther roars, there are no curtain raisers, just a whole lot more suggestion.

At its best, 3.15.20 Trojan horses some of that terror into happy surroundings. ... Glover is not always successful at adding dimension to these songs.

There’s a fine line between escapist and naïve, though, and Nelson and company aren’t afraid to toe it. The extent to which listeners enjoy this record depends on how much they buy into the fantasy of Nelson and his famous pals clinking Coronas around the pool while the rest of the world goes to hell. If it feels a little hollow, well, that’s by design.

Lo-fi veneer aside, Beckett's songs could plausibly receive the same seven-word description as an Art Brut masterpiece-- funny lyrics shouted over basic rock riffage-- but here that's as meh as it sounds.

In their rush to be the UK's most important band, they seem to have ignored restraint, charisma, and charm--the qualities that made them Next Big Thing candidates in the first place.

Watching such an undeniably talented artist blindly follow such an errant muse can be endlessly compelling, and the failure of these two albums to capture his visions and ambitions with any adequacy possesses the pull of true tragedy.

There are moments when these elements come together beautifully, as with the nostalgic dreamscape that surrounds Lola Young’s soaring vocals on “Trying.” At other times, Fred again..’s songcraft struggles, and fails, to break through.

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.