As the solidity of the term Mountain Man suggests, this band is more stolid. They are the anti-Roches, using the same group of tools for the opposite effect.

The result sounds tired, formulated, comfortable, and much too safe to be satisfying. If the album does one good thing, it's that it begs us to go back and listen to the catalogue of Clutch that was so bold and exciting.

There is a very fine line between contentment and the utter absence of feeling, and while Zebra's production and mix is flawless throughout, it falls too often on the wrong side of that line.

It rarely comes off as a direct response to his own discography. Rather, its scattered focus sounds like the result of someone finally letting that past be and trying to figure out what he wants for his future. Boratto's next great album isn't this one, but it holds a lot of promise for his future.

Apart from the reinvigorated songs from Woman, there's no urgency to any of the material here.

The Ophelias' lyrics are at times impassioned, but the vocals are banal. Yet the maturity that arises from their individual and musical self-actualization carries Almost.

While Is This Thing Cursed? won't win over any more acolytes, or incite anything close to a Billboard pop-punk resurgence, Alkaline Trio diehards will find themselves, by turns, nostalgic for what came before and thrilled by what they hear now.

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.

As background music, this is a well-produced rock album where each song has its own feel and often has solid guitar riffs. Sometimes there are even big sing-along choruses. It's only upon close listening that Tasjan's lyrics become an issue.

A sometimes pleasant but ultimately uneven album--not one worth hating, by any means, but not one that shows the Kooks' best qualities, much less takes them to another level.

Liam, whose solo work has always been more eccentric, is a natural collaborator, then, but too often the two Finns sound like they are doing little more than noodling around in the studio with longtime co-producer Tchad Blake.

It is, once again, the sound of a band coming within scraping distance of their potential. And after so many competently executed scrapes in a row, things tend to go numb. Marauder does have a small treat though, in the form of two instrumental interludes. They're only about a minute apiece, but they convince me that Interpol could whip up a fine instrumental ambient album if given a chance.

Swerving back and forth between the lanes of psychedelic road rock and dream pop, the album never reaches its intended destination. However, while directionless, the journey still uncovers beautiful moments.

A patchy album that will offer something for everyone in a streaming world but will disappoint those wanting a classic album.

Queen's title implies it's meant to function as a coronation for one of the biggest rappers ever, but it's more the sound of Minaj fighting to keep that crown on her head.

Move Through the Dawn sounds like the Coral are confident and pushes forward from Distance Inbetween. The album is a strong statement for a band that emerged amidst the guitar rock of the early 2000s and stubbornly built success and a career on retro interests and stylistic cues. That makes Move Through the Dawn enjoyable, even while its inconsistencies mark a stark difference from its predecessor or other Coral albums, like the overlooked Roots & Echoes (2007) or the lost The Curse of Love (2014).

The music isn't what anyone would call edgy. .... Sun on the Square's greatest strengths are Karen Peris's vocal melodies. After repeated listens, they have a pleasant way of nestling into your brain, regardless of the lyrical content.

There's a distance in these songs. Keeping the audience at arm's length ensures that the album won't get bogged down in pain, even as it willingly swims in that pain. While that distance also results in a slightly ephemeral experience, the result is mood music that works as well as a breakup album as it does a warm-up for the club.

Those songs [dance songs between 2013 and 2015] didn't orient themselves around the kinds of narratives that require emotive singing. The feelings they produced were tactile, registering as sensations rather than stories. There, Mastin and Levi's divergent styles created the impression of unity, with each giving the other something she was missing. On Devotion, you can hear them drifting apart.

For all the times where Noonday Dream gets, well, a little too dreamy, "Nica Libres at Dusk" demonstrates further possibility for Howard's songwriting. If he's able to marry his chops with acoustic instruments to his penchant for electronic and ambient music, without letting one take precedence over the other, he'd be on his way to a masterpiece that, at their best, each of his three records thus far has hinted at.

It is absolutely true that the musical and vocal performances here are Taylor's strongest. But in terms of messaging, she still needs to get in formation.

Perhaps Bodega will eventually create something that accurately summarizes our content-focused existence and kicks us out of our collective stupor. As it stands, though, Endless Scroll is merely a kinda-good album doomed to get lost in the content thickets.

It's easy to believe that the duo's dynamic range must not come through on their albums as successfully as on stage, making an album like Sleepless a partway muted affair. It's still an enjoyable collection performed by a highly capable team--it's just not the sound of potential being fully realized.

Even as this lyrical and conceptual vision remains compelling throughout All Ashore, it manifests less immediately in the music itself, which lacks the dynamism that animates Who's Feeling Young Now? and The Phosphorescent Blues before it.

"Sundays" is a great example of how her laid-back indie pop can work when she really leans into it. For most of the album, though, Tanukichan seems stuck between really relaxed and more pop-oriented, without quite finding a balance to make her songs compelling.

Death Lust is an exorcism of youth's most dramatic rehearsals, as well as, musically, an exercise in a concise adaptation of sharp '90s alt-rock between the harder side of Smashing Pumpkins, the softer side of Deftones, and the melodic end of post-hardcore.

Three of the 19 songs on Our Country are recycled from Davies's past. ... The remaining 16 tunes range anywhere from not bad to terribly awkward. A great many of them are marred by spoken-word introductions or interludes that only show Ray Davies's age while imparting none of his subtlety.

With its crowded track list and extended runtime, this album does not necessarily come off as an essential album in Guy's oeuvre. However, there are some strong tracks in here, and it is worth a listen for any blues aficionado.

The musical performances by West and his collaborators alone are able to save Nasir from total disaster and do warrant a listen. But as for Nas, he's left completely overshadowed.

This new installment is solid, fun, and deserving of a listen on its own merits.

This EP is over before it fully blooms. It's not a big statement, and it's a little awkward in spots. It's just a little warm-up, a little kick in the seat of the pants. There's more to come I'm sure.

What might have improved Nightstand is completing the arc it started to build. The first third of the album focused on high school rock and the second third was a change to a more college-grounded sound. It would have been nice to transcend that life for the largeness of adult life away from crushing.

"Pristine", "Let's Find an Out", and "Anytime" are all really strong songs, but they aren't enough to make Lush a good album. What they do is show that Lindsey Jordan has a lot of (the dreaded) potential as a songwriter that she isn't fully realizing yet. The rest of the album is too similar in sound and style to do much besides blur together.

Deafman Glance is a weird record. I'm not sure I like it, but I have a feeling I'll return to it later. It is Walker's least accessible album, but it also may prove in time to be an important stepping stone to the true Ryley Walker.

Love Is Dead is not a bad album, it's just that this felt like CHVRCHES' time for a great one. Love Is Dead is not that, either.

Closing waltz "These Falling Arms" shows off the band's skill at weaving together sighing guitars with an easygoing melody. By comparison, the remaining eight selections sandwiched in the middle range from not-bad to kinda-boring.

Addendum remains a strange and occasionally frustrating album, even for an artist as doggedly individualistic as Maus.

Nothing is forced about Thomas's blend of folky Americana and electronic psychedelia. However, the album becomes a chore as Thomas's nihilistic tendencies overshadow the confusingly hopeful tone he was attempting on The Other.

Dr. Dog is a band that can write a hell of a great song. But on Critical Equation, they're mostly treading water.

There is plenty of crooning and emoting from O'Dell and there are some hummable, even memorable tunes. At times, though, For Now is remarkably dull, serving as the relatively indifferent placeholder its title might imply.

Neither a direct, honest pop album nor a truly bizarre, experimental art record, Minus is a meandering mess that tries to say everything and ends up saying very little.

Staying at Tamara's is upbeat and light to a fault, a microcosm of cheer mostly blissfully unaware of the chaotic world around it. This is by design, sure, but it also makes the album feel unapologetically, yet unforgivably inconsequential.

Nash calls herself and this approach contradictory, and maybe that's the best way to describe this album, but that carries a semblance of dismissing the issues she sings through and the realities she and her fans, listeners, and others experience all too often.

Caer shows definite signs that Twin Shadow is moving in the right direction. However, the album is too often bogged down by cheerless beats, painted in varying shades of beige.

From the onset of the album, we know what we're in store to receive. Whereas DAMN. finds Kendrick Lamar twisting and turning through wickedness and weakness, wrestling often through the same issues found here, Cole delivers it straight.

It's not terrible, but Melvins have released too many albums, and have had too many high points in their storied career, for Pinkus Abortion Technician to rise above the level of interesting curiosity.

This is the second album in a row where the harder they rock, the less inspired the songs are. When they go mid-tempo and slower and add synths and other textures to their hooks, the songs sound better.

So even though this album probably will fall somewhere outside the band's top five, 12 is listenable and good, and it has some genuine standout songs.

The music does at times reach the heights of Trilogy: the main lick of "Try Me" and the excellent beat on "Hurt You" reveal flickers of creative flame in Tesfaye's songwriting. Yet the primary impression left by My Dear Melancholy is that however visible those flames, their faintness is what sticks in the memory.

Musically, The Neighbourhood continues in the same realm as their past work. It's moody, down-tempo rock with a little R&B; tinge: think sad Weeknd with occasional synths leads and a little Auto-Tuned Kanye thrown in.

It is competent and catchy. It rocks hard much of the time but also slows down for more tender and easygoing songs. And Gutt belts it out, rasps, and croons like Weiland before him, just minus some of the swagger that made Weiland such an engaging personality.

I'll Be Your Girl would stand as a fine but forgettable work on its own, yet when compared to the pedigree of its predecessors, it's quite disappointing in every way.

More often than not, Ruscha can't recapture that feeling of spontaneity, and the line between insouciance and sloppiness is small but important.

AmeriKKKant is not a great album, and objectively, it's hard even to call it a good one. That said, it feels like Ministry, and it honest-to-god soars at times.

White is Relic / Irrealis Mood at least has the good sense to drape most of Barnes' stranger ideas in a layer of danceable grooves, which keeps it pretty accessible. As far as the more experimental Of Montreal records go, this is near the top of the list. This doesn't necessarily mean I can give it a straight recommendation, but it's more listenable than Barnes' most outré material.

I'm Bad Now finds Nap Eyes somewhere in between their two former releases.

You're Not Alone takes the gruff, untamed I Get Wet and smoothes those edges out, and not even an ultra-high energy level and walls of guitar distortion can mask the fact that this party is loud, but not that fun.

On the whole, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life is a truly good album and a number of the songs on it are notable successes, but the stark shift in sonic style sets it apart from the rest of Tune-Yards' discography and not in a good way. It seems safe, it seems almost timid at times.

The Time is Now is fine. It's adequate. You might find some mixtape material on it. You might even find the album on your streaming service of choice, remember the name Craig David, play the new album, and say "hey, this isn't half bad." By the time the next day rolls around, though, you'll forget it ever existed.

This is mostly solid, occasionally great music and nothing more. That's fine, but it's also a little disappointing and will be too easy for history to forget.

This time out, Carey sheds the vital to prioritize the simple, and simple melodies aren't substantial enough to fill A Hundred Acres.

For all the anxious rhetoric of its literary namesake, Emergency flourishes when it avoids aggression.

In the end, Blood is equal parts impressive and frustrating. In many ways, Milosh recreates the triumphs of his previous work with a new recording process and a new set of characters, but his lyrical shortcomings and push to maintain a consistent mood above all else hold him back somewhat.

It's a decent record, even good. But am I going to be able to remember any of these songs in two months without playing them first? Experience says probably not.

While they're far from the first band to overdo it on that element, it's very noticeable after a few listens to the album. But the trio has an attitude that manages to be both aggressive and charming.

Turin Brakes have made an album which is "OK". No dizzying heights or subterranean lows. You may raise an eyebrow every now and again, but nothing about this music grabs your attention and holds it.

What's most unfortunate is that Shopping can do better--evidenced not only by their previous work but by a few stand-out tracks on this album.

His unwillingness to let anything breathe for very long might be a weakness, but it's also the trait that keeps all 36 minutes of Two Trains interesting, if not always engaging.

This is a recital of eight solo trumpet performances that are just kind of flat, even, and dull. The Monk tunes are redeemed by the fact that they contain tonally interesting renderings of great melodies.

If this record had been 50% weirder or 50% folkier, it would have been 100% better. It's not a bad album, and some of the pieces are stately and beautiful, but once the smell of lost potential reaches your nostrils, it's hard to focus on anything else.

A few tracks do freak out here and there ("Adam Copies" being one of them), but mostly the music seems to be made to serve the song and the voice. And that's where the biggest change seems to lie. Wiesenfeld is writing songs as a vehicle for his message, as opposed to the songs being the message. This is where fans will be split. Either you'll like the new Baths, or you'll see it as a little boring or schmaltzy.

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.

It’s alarming as a fan to hear something so different, and the Rat Film Original Soundtrack has little to offer fans of Dan Deacon or fans or soundtracks. Separated from the film it is unable to generate interest.

Haiku from Zero is a statement of potential, but it may just take one more album for the band to reach the sorts of heights they’re aiming for.

It’s disorienting and congealing at the same time, so it’s very ‘John Maus’, as in it is simple but oh so complicated.

There are a lot of fascinating, really good pieces on Anthology, and several of them work well even removed from their film context. But the ones that don’t work as stand-alone songs end up calling attention to Carpenter’s limitations as a musician.

Despite the excellent lyricism and genius flow, there are still hiccups. Most notably, these come from the Wu’s collaborators.

Although Beautiful Trauma does stick to an overarching emotional theme more than most of her excellent recent albums, Trauma is nonetheless an odd, morose beast that at times plays into Pink’s worst instincts (i.e. leaning towards cliché when she never really had problem avoiding it before).

Overall, this vocal-less EP prefers the introverted direction of the majority of the LP. As such, Luna’s reunion pair drifts into music made for the morning after, or the afternoon of.

The album favors polished professionalism and sharp arrangements over risk-taking, so while there aren’t any duds, there aren’t any of the special moments that got Lindstrøm to this point in the first place.

he best tracks on the album will bear repeated listening. But the collective experience makes you wonder if Almond could have delivered more if he had cast aside all inhibitions and let fly--maybe a second collection could achieve that.

Heaven Upside Down finds Manson struggling for meaning. The lyrics are not the harsh, pointed barbs that he supposes they are. Simply sounding like the tame, blunted fury of a man rehashing the same old tired themes.

While it’s a long way from the heights he once reached, ununiform carries more promise than Tricky has shown in some time.

Bidin’ My Time finds this affable team player demonstrating that he deserves to be known to more than just the crate diggers. Hillman’s talent remains at high levels, even as he still lacks the widespread credit he so rightly deserves.

Deer Tick could have done a lot with their plethora of strong songs: made painful cuts to release a regular album, or shoehorned an overarching narrative in and called it a concept album. But the simplest solution was the correct one. They just put out two good records on the same day, inviting but not forcing listeners to associate them.

Deer Tick could have done a lot with their plethora of strong songs: made painful cuts to release a regular album, or shoehorned an overarching narrative in and called it a concept album. But the simplest solution was the correct one. They just put out two good records on the same day, inviting but not forcing listeners to associate them.

Ease My Mind isn’t the best album you’ll hear this year or even this month, but its heart is big and if you’re looking for a little escape, here’s an album for you.

Wonderful Wonderful is the sound of a band rediscovering why they’re even making music in the first place, embracing their eccentricities instead of merely playing into what’s expected of them. It will never be anyone’s favorite Killers album, but it’s the most fun we’ve had with them in years, and a hopeful sign of truly wonderful things yet to come.

As a whole, if more of this album tinkered with their inspirations, it would have made A Sentimental Education more memorable.

These words deserve better than the music that has been made to accompany them.

Despite the gorgeous piano playing and the adept songwriting, Choir of the Mind is an overall bummer.

Hundred Waters’ talent is apparent throughout the new record, but Communicating lacks the thematic and sonic cohesion that its predecessor embodied so fully.

There is nothing here that is going to cross over to the mainstream, and individually, the tracks aren’t even all that interesting, save perhaps for Le1f’s moment early on. The context provided by listening to the album all the way through is what saves it, what gives it a point of view.

By cramming so many songs onto the album, the quality inevitable begins to dip and later songs stick too rigidly to a formula that served earlier songs more effectively. When the duo do hit their stride, they show a natural ability to write tight, late summer floor fillers, with a number of tunes set to pack out dance festivals for years to come.

Be Here Now builds on her career-long work of thinking both personally and politically, of both controlling and unleashing her strength. That approach also reveals itself as just a bit of weakness here, but Burhenn’s welcoming personality and willingness to simultaneously dance and resist prove enough to carry the disc (and possibly the day).

Every Country’s Sun certainly has some very lovely, dense, and poignant moments borne out of creative and unpredictable arrangements, yet the majority of it fails to leave any impression other than boredom.

Your enjoyment of this record almost completely depends on if it sounds good to you in writing. If a slowly moving, patient, and weird Avey Tare record sounds appealing, it almost assuredly will be; for the masses, however, some sections may register as too playfully weird.

With a few misfires and a fairly traditional take on narrative set aside, Mensa’s Autobiography is still so well-crafted that it makes (almost) every track worthwhile.