For every moment of eye-rolling overindulgence, there is an equally stunning instance of ingenuity, but the album is so stylistically all over the place, it rarely solidifies as a cohesive statement.

The Beta Band have reached out into traditional rock dynamics with mixed results.

Natural History is a fine album. The other ten tracks offer much pleasure.

Love Will Prevail is an ambitious, often great record, but in its ambition, in the risks it takes, it strives for a careful balance it can't always achieve.

Like all their albums, it's haphazard, but never before have the highs been this high.

There is no direct need to see the film to appreciate the record for its own merits-especially if hushed dark atmospheres and seemingly (but probably not) random key plinks are your thing.

The likes of Velocity Girl, the Sunflowers, and the Belltower are indie pop that happens to use the odd distortion pedal. Not unpleasant, but only marginally part of the story, if that. By the last couple discs, you have bands like Blind Mr. Jones which are rehashes of the “classic” sound of Slowdive et al, but with a flute.

If Real Emotional Trash falls short of "Pig Lib," it’s because we’re spending too much time in the tunnel, and not enough in the funnel to the tune.

Finn has succeeded in differentiating his solo material from his Hold Steady work, but sometimes I wonder if his low-key musical approach highlights the depressing nature of his storytelling a bit too much. But most listeners know what they’re signing up for with Finn at this point.

The album explores multiple reasons for obsession with drugs – spirituality, fantasy, genetics, compulsion, to avoid suicide. None are delved into as creatively as on the debut album.

All other songs have excellent moments in them, assuring that Grapefruit is indeed a good album. Had they happened more frequently and with shorter intervals though, we’d be looking at a great one.

It's more theatrical than early Stew albums, bringing the unique sense of a stage composition: varied instrumentation, clear evocative vocals and honest-to-goodness storytelling.

The slight inconsistency of The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues is enough to convince listeners that if this were a proper album and not merely a stopgap release to satiate the fans, the overall quality of the material would be stepped up considerably.

McCandless has a great voice, and when Young Galaxy gives her strong material their songs really work. But she can’t do it on her own, and the middle chunk of Ultramarine proves that.

Despite being unsure whether or not to cater to the academic impulse of hardcore funk enthusiasts, Earthology is still a unique release that unabashedly flaunts its contradictory influences.

By the end of the album I unfortunately just feel a little numb to the vocals. I’m willing to give this album a break because I love the production here, and when Sufi’s really hitting, he’s certainly a unique presence.

While "Milkweed", "What Hurts Worse", and EP closer "Talking to Fog" are worthy of joining the Beam canon, the remaining tracks tend to showcase the replaceability of many of his tracks, hardly distinguishable from 14 years ago.

Bramwell strings together fine, grabbing lyrics, but he's become too enamored of his literary bent, trying to pack together poetic devices that head off to nowhere.

You’ll want to listen to some tracks over and over again, some just once, and some for 30 seconds or less. Nevertheless, the tracks that work demonstrate what put Surfer Blood on the map in the first place: power pop ambition, surf rock style, and an implacable conviction to swim forward even when the waters seem too rough to handle.

Despite several hackneyed moments on his debut, Hughes has crafted a solid set of songs that causes feelings as it explores them.

Ten Thousand and One Injuries maintains a relatively tepid pace compared to their previous efforts, but Love is All haven’t exactly mellowed either.

It's just that 44-odd minutes of affecting, tasteful acoustic minstrelry is rather, well, inertia-inducing.

Vocals are delivered straight-forwardly, instrumental solos are kept to a minimum, and there’s a general sense of presenting things honestly in a documentary style. That fits the material which would most naturally be at home in a small-town church.

Reputation will end up being another glaring piece of evidence that fits in perfectly with whatever spin someone is trying to sell, but maybe in a couple of decades when we look back at it all, we'll see it for what it is: a solid if unspectacular set of pop songs.

While some may disparage Blackberry Smoke’s generic stance and the fact that Holding All the Roses seems so overtly radio-ready, there’s something to be said for a band that can rock so relentlessly and still maintain its melodic appeal.

Rebel Heart is very much the first Madonna album that’s actually about Madonna with a majority of these tracks commenting on her own history and accomplishments with varying degrees of success.

Luckily, she pushes forward more than she retreats back on this solid record.

African Electronic Music 1975-1982 is, after all, a bit of a hodgepodge compilation, and that Bebey was indulging his creative spirit more than he was creating music for a mass audience. Still, the more structured tracks serve notice Bebey was an accomplished composer who had several big hits in his native land.