Not all of High Anxiety works fantastically, but there is still great music to be found, and a consistent sonic “theme” throughout does a mutable job of keeping your attention throughout the project.

Despite being a concept album, The Stage doesn’t break much new ground for Avenged Sevenfold. They sound like the same band doing pretty much the same thing.

Despite some truly exciting and vital moments, The False Foundation struggles to cohere into a cogent statement befitting of a legitimately scary political moment.

Fortunately, the songs are solid enough to handle a little toying around. The Notwist are talented at writing the kind of songs that hit a melancholy and serious spot somewhere in your abdomen. A little playing around with the form misses the mark of course, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

If their classic records sounded like Newcombe on uppers, then this is the reverse: the whole record sounds protracted and dripping in molasses. Slow isn’t always bad, however. Psychedelia has a tendency to seem unhurried while keeping a tempo it can’t quite enjoy, and he hones in on a progression that works.

Sure, it may be slightly too familiar to some tastes, but Slugger still manages to be both comforting and challenging as a piece of pop music.

The are other fine moments, but not enough of them. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of record that sounds less interesting the more one listens, until the superficial pleasures ultimately wear paper thin.

While Day Breaks can be relaxing at times, it also borders on being sloppy on rare occasions such as these.

On Take Control, Slaves show glimpses of astuteness but these are often mitigated by hackneyed lyrics. This should be the revolutionary punk album that music and the wider world desperately needs right now. Sadly, it falls tantalizingly short.

While it’s refreshing to hear Moby refuse to succumb to complacency, the shallow, steely sound of These Systems Are Failing contradicts and undoes much of its rawness, making for a set that is more alienating than rousing.

Like most of Lidell’s discography, it seems simultaneously old and new, retro-minded and attuned to contemporary trends.

The band seem at times to have forgotten who they are. Where Luke Steele’s voice is at its most powerful when endearingly coarse and nasal, there are moments when the band make the bizarre decision to Auto-Tune it, rendering it generic.

Hard II Love feels like a placeholder, a set of songs that sound perfectly fine while they’re on and become forgettable when they’re not.

It would have done good for the band to don the dark and take a step back from the gentle.

They have the talent and a knack for inventive songwriting. But with High Bias, even with its attempts at envelope pushing, Purling Hiss hasn’t quite set themselves apart.

On I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always Luke Winslow-King continues to demonstrate his growth as a songwriter and entertainer capable of bringing new energy to time-worn Country Music tropes.

Spend the Night With... feels somewhat empty, and even though that might be the point, Cheena’s music can sometimes feel like a vapid novelty: fun while it lasts but short on ideas that would give you a desire to revisit.

The whole thing comes across as a bit of a mish- mash, a bit cobbled together. It’s an album all too reliant on the guest singers to give the songs identity.

Furfour is packed with widescreen synthpop ballads like this [“Acid Ali Khan”], which is either a misstep or an admirable commitment to aesthetic consistency, depending on your taste.

WOPTOBER lacks the instant classic like the Young Thug collab “Guwop Home” or the extraordinarily high-profile collaborations of Drake and Kanye West, but then again, the album plays more like one of his mixtapes than it does a traditional major label rap album. In that sense, it’s worth giving a listen just because more Gucci slip-sliding around syllables is oft a good thing.

The returns are decidedly mixed. Some listeners may get a satisfying-enough taste of what they loved about the first LP, while others will likely be disappointed and maybe even a little puzzled by a familiar favorite made uncanny.

Even if Joanne fails to connect with you emotionally, it’s nonetheless the album that will make fans and observers once again rethink what they know about the daring diva. Make no mistake: even with all her extracurricular endeavors paying off cultural dividends, Gaga’s greatest achievement is yet to come, and Joanne, flaws and all, feels like the necessary step to get there.

Musique de France is, if nothing else, a fascinating experiment in transcultural harmony.

The sound is top-notch and very effective. But the songwriting often comes up short.

All in all, it’s a shame that an artist responsible for some of the most essential efforts in UK garage has now become such a seamless blend of uninspired and corny.

Allowing themselves the creative freedom to explore a wider variety of sonic textures and moods will give AlunaGeorge the outlet that their ambition deserves, but such self-actualization cannot be found here.

Graveola always shoots for the moon, and often hits its mark, playing with electronic and tropical sounds that add layers of complexity and intrigue to its indie rock. Even when it misses the mark, though, there’s something to be learned.

The use of electronic percussion and synths does add depth to their sound, but it seems like they’re afraid to go all in, as if they afraid they will lose their identity in the process. Next time, they should go all in.

There are a handful of tracks here that are more memorable than anything on the 2012 trilogy. But it’s hard not to compare Green Day to several of their long-running fellow punk acts who’ve released strong records in 2016.

Fixion serves as more of an evolutionary link--a sound experiment--than fully formed statement of intent.

The high points of The Altar are nearly perfect, but these are outnumbered by a massive middle section comprised of unremarkable, uninspired filler.

When Yann Tiersen is on, he’s really on. And when he’s not, it’s just kind of nice and that’s all there really is to it.

For all their quality on paper in terms of instrumental skill and stylistic infusions, the tracks never really seem to get going. Dawes are faced with the facts that innovation is all well and good, but this doesn’t mean that the listener will buy into it.

True, this is not an easy album to warm up to, but despite initial hesitations, repeated listening may reveal more nuances.

Here, the best and worst moments come about when he’s working with others (which is the majority of the album), perhaps because Mr. Oizo’s trying to match each collaborator’s style. If this is the case, All Wet results in an as-yet unbalanced back-and-forth of not getting lost in his own sound or not adding enough of it in.

Songs From a Pale Eclipse will surprise few fans of neo-psychedelia, but it can stand in until the next bold psych release.

Together, on Sunergy, the two manage to find a similar language while also pushing the limits of the Buchla and of their compositions at every turn.

The results here are highly mixed, and he might simply be the kind of artist who should take more time on his releases, even if that extra time isn’t completely his choice.

Bastille is only two full-length LPs into its career, and in that time its world has gotten bigger. It’s a shame that it hasn’t gotten any wilder.

[The] lack of enthusiasm is all too transparent on AIM, and it renders it an absolute failure of a send-off.

Skiptracing is the journey we get to take with Brettin and it’s a fine one overall . The tones are warm, the sequencing is great, and the songs are mostly solid.

As far as the music goes, rhythm guitar is the foundation here, and it ranges from Strokes-ian down strokes to slow-core. The drums are mixed prominently, giving adequate room to Dacus’ towering voice. The lead guitar is mixed oddly low, though. Many times throughout the album, when a blast of lead guitar is expected, we get it, but dang is it quiet and a little deflating.

There are enough highlights to make And the Anonymous Nobody worth revisiting, but as a whole, the album is just barely above average. A valiant effort, De La Soul, but no dice on this one.

While Major Key proves that DJ Khaled is not simply a meme, Khaled swings too hard and misses too often with each attempt at a radio hit.

This is the kind of album that, with its endearingly coarse lo-fi set-up, will leave some frothing at the mouth. Others may find the Parrots’ debut album difficult to grasp, however, especially considering the lack of variety that it offers towards its back end.

Home of the Strange certainly won’t convert any naysayers of the band’s straight-and-narrow take on alternative rock, but it does underscore what has emboldened their fanbase for so long: a sound that shakes arenas and a penchant for writing songs about individuals lost in the same places they call home.

It’s unflinching, unapologetic and at times bordering on unlistenable. But it’s a bold sonic statement that brutally conveys its intended message. In this, Callus proves a success.

It’s Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry, then, turns out to be a good collaboration, one that shows the best of both players, but only when they give each other the room to make this sound more like a conversation than a shouting match.

25 25 is too dated and monotonous in its aesthetic to captivate those on contemporary dancefloors or mainstage festival grounds—where today’s EDM thrives most profoundly—and its lack of modernity and failure to iterate on dormant genre conventions will leave the cutting-edge electro-savvy intelligentsia shrugging their shoulders.

Your Wilderness does reveal this band’s skill in balancing individually accessible tracks with a larger emotive concept.

What’s most frustrating about The Mountain Will Fall is how amateur the whole thing sounds.

These Stars is a promising debut and one that rewards repeated listens. There is warmth in this coolness.

Washed Away doesn’t present any songwriting innovation, kicks no holes in the current definition of pop music, but it’s a good record and it’s fun.

Black feels like the embodiment of the masculine midlife crisis, with a similar lack of self-awareness on the part of the protagonist, even when he’s expressing realizations and moments of self-discovery.

At times, the album sounds like the recording of a raucous house party as opposed to a live performance. Suitably, the recording quality means that the band are shown in their rawest state, but Titus Andronicus was a band that thrived off of that kind of energy, anyway. ... Still, it’s hard not to want more from S+@dium Rock.

The pieces have an unfinished quality to them, as though they’re demos for something greater, something that might touch on past glory.

The Long Beach rapper hasn’t evolved much from his early years, but that lack of development is negligible when he does the West Coast sound so much justice.

Ambulance finds the Amazing pushing forward, trying new angles at their established sound. But these later songs make the band seem uncomfortable in new, spare settings.

Fading Lines is typified by a lot of great atmosphere without much in the way of great hooks. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any hooks, just that they aren’t quite strong enough to make most of these songs individually memorable.

They may not be groundbreaking, sophisticated, or poetic in any sense of the word, but what they lack in complexity and nuance they make up for in solid, simple tracks that are as harmless as they are amiable. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Blood Moon is a quiet album made at a time when everything else churned out these days comes with pomp and circumstance at wake-the-dead volume levels.

At 15 tracks, Kaytranada could’ve easily cut out about three of the lesser songs here and had a better album.

There is definitely material to like on What One Becomes, but, aside from “Clutch of Oblivion”, it’s scattered throughout longer pieces that are harder to enjoy as full songs.

Solid States is an admirable piece of work, and it happens to have several killer pop songs to boot.

The whole album has the unmistakable aura of pointlessness. There’s no passion, no tension, no thrills, nothing memorable to draw the listener into the sonic world the Chili Peppers and Danger Mouse have tried to create.

The Temper Trap strive to create similar landscapes throughout Thick As Thieves and, while they’re not always successful, they manage to fashion a few moments of sublime vastness.

The music may generate excitement live, but the off-key notes, broken melodies, and strained vocals seem more affected than effective. The first and last songs are the best.

It’s doubtful Everything At Once will arrest gentle Travis’s steady slide. But they are certainly not done yet; their rabbit is out of the bag and it’s worth catching.

The results are too often simply a bit dull, and with the synthesizers verging on the too-tranquil, Yoyogi Park comes too close to music that is better suited to an elevator or shopping mall than an urban outdoor venue.

These tunes offer a nice shift on an album that can sometimes seem more like an imitation of the past than something personally inspired by it.

Rather than ending the record with an emphatic statement, the band sounds confused and adrift. Which is a shame, because for most of its passing, Robert Ellis is an exercise in confident songwriting, creative arrangements, and strong playing.

It’s the residue of that band making a cynical attempt to polish the gloss off their music to a dull matte to the benefit of the lowest common denominator of pop listeners.

The album does demand great attention. I can’t imagine any of these songs playing on the radio, or on one or two listens attracting new fans. Stalwarts of Circuit des Yeux and Haley Fohr will likely delight, however, in this new installment of her performance art.

Despite its strokes of mass appeal, Mayday offers not only a taste of the quintessential Boys Noize sound, but also some fresh novelty that devotees can easily appreciate.

It may not be as varied and as inventive as its more radical forerunner, but it nonetheless offers a very penetrating illustration of the post-social, estranged urban environment we often inhabit, doing what it does very well despite doing it a tad too much.

As it stands, Throws is built upon a pile of production choices that are either indie-tastic or ill-advised, depending on one’s opinion.

I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City largely plays to his strong suits. Around the album’s halfway point, however, things begin to run off the rails.

Aided by producers John Paul White (the Civil Wars again) and Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes) the pair have delivered a collection of songs that are sometimes dark, sometimes gorgeous and tailor made for an audience that seeks out the kind of records that Ray LaMontagne put out early in his career and then cast aside or that Sam Beam never quite has gotten across with Iron & Wine.

Monolith of Phobos is an artistic anomaly that, like this year’s election season, will find listeners ultimately settling for one side or another; it’s not that either necessarily likes their choices, rather it’s more they’ve been left with little option other than to settle with the results.

At over an hour long with just 10 tracks, The Triad is built from moments of refined beauty stretched across a frame that might be just too big, its many slow moments shrouded behind gradual shifts in its dense fog of ambient noise.

Thank You is an interesting album in that it shows musical growth for Meghan Trainor while simultaneously moving her closer to the more homogenous sound of mainstream pop. It’s not great by any means, but it is definitely catchy and easy to sing along with.

With brevity missing from Toledo’s musical toolkit (see the blame-deflecting “The Ballad of the Costa Concordia” and its 11:32 run time), the pain is exacerbated by songs that are simply too long to be memorable; what few hooks exist on Teens of Denial are quickly forgotten.

Wild Pendulum’s flaws are admirable ones, the result of ambition more than apathy. Furthermore, the lush ornamental arrangements on these songs do little to disguise the effortlessly toe-tapping melodies that permeate each piece of music.

Potential highlights are held back by poor choices.

I found Spookyland to be at their best and most original at their extremes: haunting, bare ballads or big, proto-shoegaze anthems, where they create a soft, pillowy canvas for Gordon’s poetry, rather than jam its sensitivity into a noisy, pub band format. And yet, Spookyland succeeds throughout to create their own twisted universe of youthful feeling, using their moody rock ‘n’ roll to process a mad world.

If the songs aren’t great at every turn here, they’re still very good, making this a solid record for long-time fans happy to see the band back, and a good set for drawing in new fans.

Get Gone might not show its strengths in its lyricism, but it makes up for that by being a talented culmination of energy.

The material is there, as is the voice, but too often the two become muddled despite her best efforts to the contrary. If nothing else, Detour is a enjoyable glimpse into a career path untaken.

All Saints might never rise to that exalted company [Everlys, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas], but there are more than enough reminders on this record that, when they are on, they can still create a sound which few if any of their peers can match.

It’s a disappointment for an artist who’s managed to get better and better with every subsequent release up until this point.

Helter Seltzer ends up being a bit of a hit and miss album, where the biggest pluses come from the band stretching its sound a bit.

As a whole, it eschews the current R&B trend of existing within multiple genres or creating a genre unto itself, and the collection is unengaging because of it.

PersonA is maudlin and cold and conflicted to the bone, the high-contrast shadow vista creeping out from behind Up from Below‘s brimming effulgence. Here, there’s not a bright future, but a dystopia in which utopianism seems vital.

When the album quietly disrupts its meditations is when it is at its most effective. Other parts of the album draw you in quietly, but the softness of these songs can lose its effect after a while.

Dean Blunt’s debut full-length as Babyfather is very noisy.

If you’re deeply invested in the Guided by Voices catalogue this record won’t disappoint you. You’re getting exactly what they’re selling. If there’s not much to the album past that point, well, that doesn’t have to matter so terribly.

On The Hope Six Demolition Project, the album just sometimes sounds flat uncomfortable with its focus.

Most of the songs on The Diary work far better in isolation than they do when treated as part of a unified whole.