E·MO·TION is still a very pleasing album if not just a shade overambitious, clearly trying too hard to make the same genius pop moments that Kiss churned them out with effortless flair.

While there is much to relish on Lovers Know, the studio-driven nature of the album feels sterile and rote, shoehorning Burhenn’s wide worldview into narrow refrains and clichéd choruses, thus caging a once wild voice.

There are times Sweet Baboo tilts too far for me towards a certain type of purposeful cute-ness that ends up feeling inauthentic, more of a purposeful surface-level impression than content to grab ahold of.

While Potter’s never sounded more assured, many of the songs are simply serviceable although not quite strong enough to ensure a status that could be considered classic.

Grand Romantic isn’t going to be for everyone. But if you happen to thrill at the twinkling eclecticism of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or get misty-eyed when Freddie Mercury soars above his backing choir on “Somebody to Love,” then you’ll likely follow Ruess at least part of the way on this hopelessly earnest, grandiosely romantic excursion.

Granted, the lyrics are somewhat cumbersome and heavy-handed, further detracting from the possibility of ensuring these songs will ever be considered of the hummable variety.... The Monsanto Years may not be an album for the ages, but there’s never a moment of doubt that the conviction is clear.

What salvages the record from being an exercise in nostalgia, are the moments where Strange Wilds drop the mid-tempo grungy gloom for moments of pure hardcore bliss.

In spite of improving on his past few records, Mondanile goes back to writing a technically sound and agreeable effort that falls back on familiar concepts.

While the new audio mix that accompanies this reissue (no bonus tracks included) might entice the audiophiles and give observers further reason to delve into its inner meanings, the sheer profundity of Waters’ weighty subject matter still leaves little room for immediate attachment. A noble experiment from an edgy, outspoken prophet and pontificator, Amused to Death isn’t exactly the stuff of easily consumable entertainment.

Watkins Family Hour is a slight but enjoyable album without pretensions to being anything more than slight and enjoyable.

An album that retains their penchant for unapologetic pop and a sound so radio-ready, it’s bound to beg comparison with the Simply Red style of old.

Sadly, Bannon’s ambient music struggles with a staggering lack of presence that his heady breakbeat programming never failed to accentuate.... The rest of Pattern of Excel seems to follow that trajectory toward more acoustic and gloomy sounds, by far the most effective section of the album, though not exactly innovative.

It feels like Williams is trying on a few different costumes to see what she likes, and only landing on material that feels natural maybe half the time. The good news is all of these songs are catchy and singable, and Williams strong vocal performance makes everything work even when a song doesn’t feel quite natural for her.

The album does nothing in the last 32 minutes that it doesn’t do in the first two, but the whole runtime is so fundamentally satisfying that getting hung up on its orthodox formula feels joyless and dumb.

Lloyd Maines’ production helps these 14 songs pass by with the ease of a cold pitcher of beer on a hot day.

The Clearing may not be a slam-dunk for the neoclassical movement, but it serves out positive little tidbits of what the subgenre has to offer.

By no means essential, Smokey prove themselves an interesting footnote in the annals of pop music, one full of ideas but lacking the necessary talent to execute effectively.

Homesick is a rocky album with songs stretching too long for their same-sound focuses.

A disjointed album, [that] lacks the weight for emotional impact.

Fingers, Bank Pads and Shoe Prints can get predictable at times, RP Boo’s comfort zone of vocal sample, rattling percussion and synth interludes becomes obvious by about four tracks in.

Era, then, is most rewarding when it is allowed to be itself.

All Your Favorite Bands is warmer than its predecessor.... Yet the album still smacks of diminishing returns and an over-familiarity that Browne himself has never been completely able, or willing, to shake.

The album is full of songs that falter either for a lack of a guiding beat or because of misguided lyrics that carry little purpose.

Although this is mildly successful, Yukon Blonde fail to takes any real chances, a problem they must deal with if they are ever going to grow.

While crossover potential is huge with their more conventional, contemporary sound, Freedom is doomed to connect on a far more limited level than their early triumphs, especially with the genre’s diehards.

Wildheart is the sound of Miguel fully coming into his own identity. Now, we just have to wait for him to do something with it.

There’s nothing wrong with anything on Tablet, simply that Smith has been doing the same thing for so long that one starts to wonder what he might be able to do if he set his sights a little higher.

Regardless of the overall quality, it’s nearly impossible to resist the urge to dance. And in that, Déjà Vu succeeds.

Starfire is a missed opportunity. Instead of finding the holes that have yet to be filled, Jaga Jazzist have unfortunately chosen to play it safe.

An overall sense of exclusivity permeates their blithe, sassy melodies, not to mention that its “adorableness” can occasionally irritate (cussing with fey charm is just so earnestly dopey). Still, Alpine’s transformation into a breezier, more cosmopolitan ensemble suits them.

Each song displays years of skill and talent, but as a whole the album shows that even the greats might need a few practice runs before they get it spot on.

It’s all pleasant enough, but it largely lacks the appeal of Actress’ own recordings.

It’s populist KROQ grunge for a new generation, though you get a sense these guys would see that as a compliment.

If Live. Love. A$AP. was the start of Rocky’s trip, then At. Long. Last. A$AP. makes for one hell of a disappointing comedown.

Unfortunately, however, the band too often drops the tuneful troubadour for the drunken singalong.

After the confident aire that helped make No Ghost as good as it is, Vieux Loup feels like a regression, a “safe” record that fails to capitalize on the growth we were seeing throughout the Acorn’s tenure.

Good moments are spread across 16 tracks, which is significantly more than any previous Owens’ effort, solo or otherwise, and the man’s sound has always been the opposite of unique. Over a prolonged tracklist, his invariant topic matter, coupled with his saccharine singing over slow-mid-tempo songs, becomes much too much.

For now, Drones can be chalked up as one step forward, one step back for this British trio.

Something special about music is often lost in the space of the recording studio- namely the spontaneity of an artist problem-solving under limited circumstances.

For all of its faults, Multi-Love is far more engaging and interesting than anything being created by Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s so-called contemporaries.

The songs on Monterey are uniformly pretty, due to the excellent harmonizing of Ken Pettengale and Joey Ryan, but the downcast vibe the record has seems like it will limit its appeal to very specific sections of the folk and Americana audiences.

There is enough good stuff on here to satisfy Prefuse 73 fans who’ve waited patiently since 2011 for a new full length.

While the monster-sized guest spots and lyrics about larger-than-life luxury were intended to give the album an international flavour, the result is merely one of boring homogeneity.

In its least engaging moments, Platform feels more like a homework assignment geared to some equivocal set than an album. In its better moments, it’s electronic music for the fourth-dimension.

It’s the bookends of Who Me? that shine some light on Wauters’ troubadour potential.

If Hairless Toys is the sound of an artist with absolutely nothing to lose, then it also is the sound of an audience with little to gain.

Even without the immense impact the music tireless aims for, Heirs is a solidly fun and frantic album, a rarity for the stuffy, overserious post-rock genre.

It’s a private album, filled with in-jokes and notes that only make sense for Braxton himself.

Surfer Blood tease at a break away from the formula, but because 1000 Palms is a mostly unsatisfying grab for a standardized sound, even the most interesting moments fade away into the gray motionlessness.

Fans of psychedelic soirees ala early Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd will likely find satisfaction. As for everyone else, well, suffice it to say, drugs of another sort may indeed be needed.

Blade of the Ronin is a modest, dignified return for one of underground hip-hop fans’ long lost favorites. It won’t be a memorable record, but for fans who have waited this long for something new, it provides.

SOL‘s awakening moments are defined more by what is absent rather than what is present.

From moment to moment, III has trouble distinguishing itself.

Stylistically, Born Under Saturn is an unfortunate step backward for a promising, unique artist.

To Where the Wild Things Are proposes an interesting if familiar journey, but the kitschy, “poppier” first half feels oddly lifeless.

From that trio of songs, it’s clear that Steve could do more with his sound, but he’s hunkered down in the gritty blues shuffle, making Sonic Soul Surfer one of the most frustrating albums of 2015 so far.

Despite the change in scenery, the results are the same intense, fraught, pretty/ugly postpunk mishmash as ever.

These songs are ethereal to a fault, unable to gain a foothold in memory. If Portico continue down this path, they’re liable to become faceless where they were once exhilarating.

Bay is unable to ever quite match the sheer fire of opening stretch of the album, which is a bit of a bummer. And revisiting that whole matter of treading new ground, well it just doesn’t happen. Still, the pieces are just too good to resist--Bay has plenty to offer.

It’s no surprise to find that Sexsmith is doing little to reinvent himself on this album, the cheeky charm of “Saint Bernard” notwithstanding. Still, the comforting warmth and tenderness of the strongest tracks here makes Carousel One an album worth some spins.

Musically, Cherry Bomb finds Tyler taking a step in the right direction by ever-so-slightly removing himself from the world of his early albums and mixtapes, but it’s only a half-measure.

The problem is that everything they’re putting out sounds like some project a highschooler might come up with in order to impress his too-cool guitar teacher.

Depersonalisation is a record that certainly wears more familiar musical influences on its sleeve but also shows the potential for forging a more personalized sound.

There’s nothing bad about the aforementioned tracks. They just lack the edge that makes Hubbard’s music dangerous.

As it stands, the album shows us our heroine at her most malleable and, while it’s an enjoyable listen, there’s nothing as joyfully buoyant as Estelle’s 2005 Kanye West-assisted single “American Boy”.

So no Sgt. Pepper here, but then again, no one would ever expect that from happy-go-lucky Ringo.

The songs on At Least for Now run the gamut to extremely engaging to extremely overwrought.

The lack of substance, coupled with an occasionally overwhelming “lite-ness” that veers dangerously close to easy-listening, makes Complete Strangers a less than solid effort.

There are a couple of missteps, however, including the repetitive verse section of “Livin’ In Chaos”, which tires quite quickly. Then there’s “Save The Planet”, which features a refrain of, “We’ve got to save the planet! It’s the only one with beer!”, which is maybe a little too Dad-rock, or even Grandpa-rock, for its own good.... Still, This Is the Sonics is a fine and often fun record.

Carrie & Lowell is tough to nail down, but it’s also tough to listen to.

Time to Go Home seems like half the album it could have been.

Goon isn’t great, at least in terms of its ambitions, but it is a fine example of what might evolve from pure pop purpose.

Flawlessly rendered and unoffending to a fault, the perfection of All These Dreams is its greatest shortcoming.

If the Go! Team’s first three records felt a bit like mainlining sugar water, The Scene Between, with its narrower palate and less daring adventurism, is even more sticky sweet.

There is nothing wrong with bands making predictable music specifically designed to be played live; hell, bands like Motörhead and AC/DC have become rock institutions by doing just that. With this in mind, do not expect an artistic revelation from Fantasy Empire.

This might not be a classic, but for fans, it’s still filled with its own pleasures.

The major fault one might find with For All My Sisters lies in the fact that with so little let up, there’s little to distinguish one song from another.

As it stands, Brava is mostly just a reminder that Brodinski helped plant the seed but is perhaps not the right gardener to helpp it grow.

It will go down as an odd little duck because James understand that sometimes you need to baffle your audience while engaging them.

Sunday Dinner is a fine start for the singer, even if it leaves him, at moments, still searching.

You will warm up to some songs considerable quicker than others, almost to the point where slower and quieter numbers are in danger of being overlooked.

Over a derivative, drawn-out hour much of the great expectations for The Door Behind The Door slowly and sadly ebb away.

What’s frustrating about Strangers to Ourselves is that Modest Mouse doesn’t need to wander so far afield on it, not when doing what they do best still works well here.

Dungeon Golds reeks of Record Store Day--it sounds like something that a super fan would hoard away. This doesn’t mean that the tracks are really odd or even deviate much from the overall output from the band, it just means that a fistful of really great songs were paid too much attention over too long a period of time.

Policy is a quaint and breezy record that just happens to sound exactly like what it is--an Arcade Fire solo effort.

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.

Ultimately Full Speed feels like an album struggling to recreate “Body Language”‘s success over and over, sing-rapping his way through a variety of pretty familiar scenes exemplifying just how hard it is to be a talent in major need of a vision.

Chasing Yesterday, despite alluding to the framework of time in its title, is an album of no time: not interested enough to truly mine from the past, seemingly incapable of moving forward with new ideas, and too stuck in old rhythms to be called music of its time.

Most songs here seem to contain the DNA of a dozen other tracks, with Barns stitching them together Frankenstein-style. The results are occasionally brilliant, often frustrating, but always confounding.

The result is an album that’s simply too confused to provide the kind of example Doomtree hopes it will and too taxing to properly enjoy. It works best as a reminder that these are some of the best solo talents working in hip-hop today.

Hyperview finds them wandering in a more melodious direction, sometimes for better or worse. The album may not be completely game-changing, but it rings like a natural (occasionally unsteady) evolution.

The songs are tight and well produced enough that you might find yourself, at moments, wanting them to loosen up a bit.

The results are never short of lovely, but the chosen limitations do sometimes lead to less lasting impressions than those left by their more fleshed-out counterparts.

While Six Organs of Admittance do an admirable job of crafting big walls of feedback and drones over which to jam, the tracks on Hexadic tend to meander and stumble around without really going anywhere.

Terraplane is a respectful homage by a gifted singer and songwriter, but it only intermittently provides the pleasures of a topnotch blues record.

The handful of tracks that work on Ratworld demonstrate that Menace Beach has potential. But the rest of the album shows clearly that while the group has a distinctive sound, they just aren’t there yet from a songwriting perspective.

Bishop’s self-indulgence stunts any suggestion that anyone other than a serious aficionados is going to express anything more than passing interest.

The volume and aggression are still there, but without any textures or atmospherics to give that aggression character, it all makes for an often-dull experience.