The compelling yet skimpy new material feels mostly like an occasion for the remixes, some of which are actually quite worthwhile.

These guys are capable musicians and studio heads, and mechanically speaking, these are fine pop songs-- well crafted, ably produced, everything in its right place-- but they don't particularly move you.

Someday World is well arranged, meticulously produced, even catchy at times. But there’s an overriding sense of aimlessness, of people just dropping by the studio and breezing into the songs before wafting off to a more important appointment.

Opus oscillates between two poles. On the one side are entrancing progressive house numbers like the bookending "Liam" and "Opus."... At the other end of the spectrum are songs informed by Prydz’s pop instincts, and these can be more of a mixed bag.

If you’re looking for pop with a light outer frosting of edginess, Visuals hits the spot and then some. But if you’d like to hear Mew explore those edges and break free from the stultifying safety of their music, Visuals leaves you frustrated.

Despite showcasing some of Eminem’s stylistic growing pains, Curtain Call 2 isn’t completely lined with duds.

It's sort of a perfect concept for Thompson: it's not particularly clever or abstract but to actually gather the efforts, time, and resources to release this album-- straight-faced-- seems mad. At this point, though, those who delight in Thompson's particular madness will need no explanations.

Festival Thyme shows there's still enough fight in them to earn a reprieve.

The Spirit still play hard-to-get, which helps to avoid any ridiculous moments on this polished sophomore effort, but they're often too stand-offish to even challenge the listener, let alone push the envelope that their influences have so neatly prepared for them.

With only six songs on offer--one of which is a 75-second interlude called 'The Curlew'--it's hard to feel like this is the assertive, confident statement Fake has it in him to make. As a strategic move out from the ghetto of nostalgic IDM Nowheresville, though, it'll suit just fine.

I don't know what exactly it says about Paul Banks, but the most borderline-embarrassing tracks on Skyscraper are, in fact, the strongest--it's the safe, formulaic moments that fall flat and, unfortunately, make up a substantial portion of the record.

Yes, the music this band makes is undeniably fun--Dead Cross bounces along with so much pep you could almost consider it a party record. But they stick to a fairly straight-ahead take on thrash and hardcore that doesn’t shed much new light on the players involved.

These guys don't showcase a similarly thorough ear for songwriting, but as far as rock'n'roll feats of strength go, GB City, their debut, registers quickly.

Though it boasts a couple of heaters, A Thousand Heys butts up against the same problem faced by so many others working in this timeless but relatively basic template -- there are undoubtedly listeners who won't ever get enough of this stuff, but how can you distinguish yourself while still maintaining the spirit of your predecessors?

The album flows well, effortlessly segueing from Achtung Baby-like rock to mechanical new wave like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. O’Riordan and Koretsky sing simple lyrics, often repeating the same phrase over and over, allowing alternate meanings to sink in.

Moments with genuine heart and drive are too often spoiled by overeager schmaltz. The raps on Roses are fleeting compared to previous projects, and while K.R.I.T. has proven many times that he can carry a tune, the album suffers when he shifts gears completely.

certainly have the energy to go a little crazy musically; no one can say Monotonix lack physical effort on Not Yet. But to get people to care as much about listening to them as witnessing their live shows, it's time to work on the muscles of their imagination.

Largely devoid of lyrical texture and detail, the universe conjured by World often feels bland to a fault.

Unlimited Love is competent and comforting—its creators rarely try to grab your attention but never totally embarrass themselves either. (Well, maybe a little during the rap verses in “Poster Child.”)

Co-produced by the band and Josh Evans, it’s filled with all the markers of cerebral, studio-born rock music: drum loops and programmed synths, swirling keys and fretless bass, wide dynamics and spacey textures. For the first time in a while, the winning moments are the slower cuts. ... The artistic rejuvenation that Gigaton aims to provide still seems somewhat out of reach.

These are tightly-wound songs that highlight the band member’s obvious gifts. Sister is never anything less than adroit, but it’s also never anything more.

It’s that they’re one of many bands following this particular path and Dunes’ best hope is that you haven’t heard any of them yet.

Dolphins is both hypnotic and staggering at times, but it lacks the extraordinary stamina that those earlier Mi Ami long-players kept from end to end.

More consistent-- if more predictable and less spectacular-- than pretty much any other record in his exhaustive catalog.

Mugison's vigorous showmanship--effectively conjuring the writhing, sweaty-browed anguish of a man of the cloth who's been caught in a by-the-hour motel with his pants down--isn't always enough to elevate his songs beyond genre exercises.

More than anything, Glazin's sneer'n'strut is just too much of a pretty good thing: One or two at a time, these songs work wonders, but over half an hour, the Boys' retrograde sneer and strut proves a bit too safe and samey.

Hanna mostly wins in the sea of Hollywood action soundtracks, but it's marginal as a Chemical Brothers album (I prefer it to their dry, overstuffed mid-decade works).

If this is his new beginning, it’s an unambitious one: Lidell has never sounded like more of a traditionalist than he does on this amiable but uncomplicated record.

These pendulum shifts--from frustrating to fascinating and back again--play out within the songs themselves.

On Warm Blanket, May revisits many of the same themes that he did just over a year ago, only with fuller orchestrations, and a partial explanation for his love of the mundane.

Arnalds' score ultimately isn't as satisfying [Trent Reznor's The Social Network or Cliff Martinez's on Drive], especially in the front half where he's excessively patient and slow to build momentum.

It’s another down-the-middle, crowd-pleasing Ryan Adams record at a time when that crowd was expecting him to bring the heat.

Mitral Transmission is a fascinating album, then, a would-be footnote that reveals Fox’s willingness to mine most anything for sound. Sometimes, as on the first half of Spiritual Emergency, that process can lead to messy results. But elsewhere, it’s the power pushing Guardian Alien and Fox past their past associations and into a wonderfully strange and unpredictable future.

Diamond Hoo Ha does seem like an apt description of the glittery nonsense contained within.

On much of the album, repetition crosses into redundancy, especially true on the two Modeselektor-produced tracks, "Tawwalt El Gheba" and "Enssa El Aatab".

Even at less than a half hour, Lo Tom suffers from redundancy, not surprising when you’ve made more than one song reminiscent of “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and you’re not actually AC/DC.

Ultimately, No Tourists is the sound of a once-inflammatory band happily lodged in its comfort zone, where virtuoso water treading meets industrial-strength customer satisfaction.

It's not always great--the band has a tendency to let its best ideas get the best of them--but there is a bigness of sound that is hard to approximate. And even harder to control.

It's not that Tribute To isn't on some level deeply felt, but it's just not deeply considered, and while it's nice to hear James focused and playing to his strengths after the scattered "Evil Urges," his tribute eventually loses the one thread it sets out to carry on its cover.

Like so many debuts, Hats Off to the Buskers is ultimately a document of a band searching for their own voice in those of others.

The album is restrained, surprisingly low-key, and-- at its lowest points-- polite.

The bursts of bright energy and amateurish enthusiasm on Golden Grrrls shine on wondrously for several minutes, but after a while the limitations of stunted musicianship and repetitive songwriting take over.

It seems boring and a bit lazy to say that Wiley sounds best when he’s still offering up recognisable grime tunes, but it’s undeniable that on The Ascent the strongest of such efforts capture the rapper in his best light.

Both the scant material and under-inspired lyricism are symptoms of the same problem: a dearth of unexpected ideas from an MC once seemingly capable of endless ones. Ghost’s done worse, but he used to be so excitingly unpredictable. Now you pretty much know what you’re going to get.

The heavier quick-change songs push several different buttons at unexpected moments, but the more straightforward songs, the ones that should glue the record together, flounder.

Ghostface Killahs is marred by too many tracks that are either curdled by casual cruelty or just tired retreads.

So far they don’t have those hits, of course, but they’ve come up with enough passable facsimiles to fill a pretty likeable album.

It’s a party vibe that doesn’t entirely know the party’s about to end in the worst way. But while it lasts—through the Afrobeat fusion of “Mad Dog in Yoruba” and the upfront yet faraway-sounding horn blasts in “Macumba 3000” and the baile/bossa simmer of “Todos Os Terreiros”--it’s enough to make you wish the background music was up front.

Sice, Brown, and drummer Rob Cieka were flexible and fluid musicians, capable of following Carr down whatever twisting pathway he was carving out of the pop landscape. Remove any component from that formula and it wouldn’t be the same. The proof of that is right here in this well-intentioned but watered down comeback.

Hersh produces the record herself, and she doesn't do her compositions any favors.... Still, her voice has that edgy intimacy it's always had.

Once producing dense, complex music that rewards each additional listen, Dissolver's content as comfort food for rockists, too quickly sating the listener.

Chris Dave’s accomplished chops demand that he should be the star of his debut--but too often he’s lost in the firmament.

While neither as frenetic as the group's debut or as stylistically curious as Tributes, World boasts smart pop sensibilities all the same.

[Self Made 2] exists to force-feed Hot 97 playlists.

The album doesn’t have enough blemishes, stumbles, or flourishes like this to give it extra excitement and curiosity. The risk level stays relatively comfortable; the payoff never really shoots up.

The Storm Sessions’ improvisation has the spirit of adventure, but the album winds up feeling stuck at home.

B.O.A.T.S. II is an album that feels happy just to exist, a rejection of the modern idea that album releases are serious events and all the tracks that sound like they were fun to make get relegated to bonus cuts or mixtapes.

The lack of structure makes these songs feel experimental, but not sufficiently to commit to being out there in a remarkable way.

On La Cucaracha, possibly out of a debt to realism, the duo has mostly chosen material founded on notions of placidity (or, in the case of "Friends", erased much of the original color), purposefully disallowing their own music its previous vitality.

It's an intriguing approach that yields a few great songs, but because of the glut of similar material, these standout tracks tend to get lost in a neutralizing fog of sameyness.

It’s easy to miss Krauter’s compelling and complicated arrangements; the record is subdued almost to a fault. You have to put in work to feel drawn into Krauter’s world.

The band has easily come up with its best set of songs since its sort-of 2001 breakthrough "Behind the Music." If not every track on the set is a winner, neither are there any outright stinkers.

Adding more voices to the mix turns the monolithic Big Mess inside out. What was once a foreboding haunted mansion is now a carnivalesque fun house; not a place to linger or live but rather a wild ride that’s worth one spin—but maybe not a second.

So while the record is pretty and intermittently enjoyable, it feels one-note and ultimately flat.

Gallery is six Craft Spells songs that range from good to pretty good, which theoretically should make it a welcome addition.

It’s a confused album that sounds like it wants to sit on the shelf next to do-it-all pop savants like Jeff Lynne or Todd Rundgren, yet retreats to the safety of Antonoff’s alt-pop impulses before anything spectacular really develops.

The quieter work here may suggest a way forward, but Wild Strawberries has a transitional feel.

Their singing is stripped of its former bite, and while they still ramp up the fuzz, it's a much cleaner-sounding album made at Dan Auerbach's Nashville studio. And as a whole, it's very inconsistent.

Though lyrically ponderous and humorless, Titles and Idols is far from being an unpleasant listen.

Hair finds Imperial Teen in full-bore navel gazing mode, talking both obliquely and directly about where they are and, more importantly, how they got there.

It was and is a spotty album from a time when Prince was making a lot of those.

But for all of its immediate pleasure, In Ghostlike Fading feels slightly vacant, valuing tribute and stylization above personal expression.

Though the album is staid and formulaic by design, it doesn’t always color inside the lines: It feels more like background music failing up than ambient music failing down.

For all its imposing scale, though, it lacks some of the dramatic finesse of classic Prurient. Fernow’s poetic lyrics, spoken or shrieked, have been a key hallmark of the project, and without them, these abstracted noisescapes lack the narrative character of his best work.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the LP for anyone who can't make an hour on the treadmill, but there are a few tunes here worth hearing. Too bad you can't exactly make out who's cranking them out.

For the most part, the songs on Cosmic American Music slip into the ether without much to keep them earthbound.

The group is at its best when it balances excess and exuberance, when its sparse snippets of quiet feel like clarity, not compromise.

In other words, Fool's Gold made a Foreign Born record.

Many of the songs here sound not just derivative but generic. Compassion still feels like the album that Lust For Youth have been working toward this whole time--it just turns out that the journey may have been more rewarding than the destination.

When the Shock does muster a strong melody, he makes a synth-pop jam out of it, and those are Maritime's better moments.

As frightful and bewildering as a Dion McGregor nightmare, Thought Gang reveals Lynch and Badalamenti’s shared drive to disrupt any through line or logical outcome, the sounds and words as baffling as dream logic.

Finally, albeit in flashes, there are hints that Fifth Harmony may reach that peak.

Machine Messiah, though, is the rare Sepultura album where the vibe of the music doesn’t consistently match its central themes.

After the surprising opening salvo, however, Shots clumsily bogs down in its desire to be big and rocking, even though any time Ladyhawk can be bothered to push the tempo.

In her raw, rollicking delivery, MØ does sound comfortable in her skin again, giving the lyric a genuinely openhearted turn. Motordrome occasionally passes through such exhilarating moments, but faceless production too often spins its wheels, making it seem as though MØ is still in search of a sound to match the bravado.

There are few moments across No Fear that feel immediate, timely, or necessary, and their sense of urgency has dulled. For all the hype, fans deserved something better than just good enough.

Indeed, there are some dull moments on Spokes, but plucking tracks from the record and turning them around under the magnifying glass probably misses what Plaid intended (this one seems meant to be listened to in succession).

While most of Double Jointer's tracks are at least good, the band doesn't tap into that spirit often enough, and ultimately it leaves the album feeling a bit flat.

While Hypnotized nudges Perro and Chiericozzi out of their established comfort zone, it also has the effect of making you appreciate the tightened-up craft and finely curated song selection they exhibit with the Men.

Ministry of Love does come off like something of a fashion victim, sounding expensive but uncomfortable, looking good but doing little to stand out.

If Eternally Even was James’ aggrieved effort to engage directly with a world in unrest, Tribute To 2 is an attempt to offer succor. It’s a little glimpse of the past James hopes will soothe and reassure us.

It's not that these 40 minutes are too extreme or overly dependent on too many ideas; it's that Dragged into Sunlight haven't found out how to synthesize their best impulses and broad ambitions into a whole.

This album feels more like a series of genre exercises, a place in which they occasionally work up a palpable tension, but never enough to make this more than an adequate diversion from the resources they're obviously sourcing.

Mostly, En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog offers driving, instantly catchy songs that would sound excellent blaring from beneath a laser show, some ferris wheel spinning in the background. The destination is almost too familiar; before, Dungen often led listeners down a thornier, less trodden path. The preferable voyage will depend on who’s listening.

Regardless of Heart Head West’s stretch of sweet-and-sour ballads, its lack of textural and rhythmic variety leaves you hungry for something heartier.

Paper Trail more often succeeds when the positivity sounds more earned than court-ordered.

This is a great album to throw on when you need something to enhance the mood or otherwise fill the air when working on something else.