Schuster-Craig’s desire to mask his voice is understandable, though, because he has a tendency to deliver his words woozily and as if someone has hung him upside down and is shaking them out of him syllable by syllable. This, combined with a general lack of direction, renders a decent section of Teaspoon to the Ocean dull at best and unlistenable at worst.

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.

Wherever the band is taking their sound as they transcend into the next album, Mansion Songs leaves enough of a fascinating blueprint that fans of the band will wonder where they’re headed next.

With Dark Side of the Mule, Haynes and company’s faithful recitations do little to breathe life into already tired songs for those new to the Mule.

Of course, most of the songs by these artists are fun and silly more often than serious.

That’s the big problem for The Planet: it’s too morose and humorless to be really good pop music, and too upbeat and cheap to be taken very seriously.

All in all, Black Star Elephant seems accomplishes its goals--delivering an album that thrives off its ‘good vibes’. There is no denying that Nico & Vinz better their listeners by eschewing negativity, not to mention avoiding profanity for the most part. That said, sometimes so much positivity grows ever too schmaltzy and a bit blasé.

Even close listens won’t always make it clear. Jóhannsson doesn’t bend genres, he blends them. And as far as film soundtracks go, that’s a smidgen above par-for-the-course.

All of the composite aspects that make this band so compelling are present on Then Came the Morning. Unfortunately, they’re misallocated in pretty obvious ways.

With all that early potential, the rest of the album sometimes can’t keep up. The record, though, never loses its way, remaining a convincing and mysterious sonic space throughout, one often worth getting lost in.

Uptown Special isn’t quite special enough.

Fall Out Boy have defined their sound and vision going forward with American Beauty/American Psycho. What exists here is a reasonably entertaining blueprint; the follow-up will tell if they can keep the momentum built here going or not.

The “Greatest Hits” CD is made up more of deep cuts than big hits, but with a few well known tracks included. There is substantially less Eminem than on the first side.

Without any truly standout tracks, it’s easy to call Hood Billionaire unnecessary.

The sounds are attractive, sometimes unique, but a personality gets lost in translation.

Yes, Forever is mostly redundant. But if that’s the only thing you have to say about it, then that’s a little unfortunate.

His flow is solid on this album, and there’s no reason to suggest Ghostface is done, but if he is trying to recapture something, all we get here is sound and fury.

One wishes that the group took a little more time, if not in honing their lyrics, then in not ripping off classic bands of yore, as there is something to be said for taking one’s influences and pureeing it in a blender, rather than simply just copying what came before, which, unfortunately, Shonen Knife sometimes lapse into here.

So much of the album winds up repeating itself thematically that despite the giddy sugar rush one feels when overloaded with hooks like these, a surprising amount of the songs here don’t have that much staying power, especially during the disc’s final stretch.

Faust has very little idea where they’re taking anyone.

Overall, Adrift is pleasing and gives one a moment’s pause to really consider what’s at work here, even if the songs in the middle of the disc are generally not overtly sterling and you can point to areas of the album where there’s a weakness at work.

On 2014 Forest Hills Drive , we’ve still got the same ol’ Cole, but with diminishing returns and without any friends to help him.

As they spend the album working their way through a handful of loosely related styles, Lifer carries with it the feel of a mix of like-minded groups rather than that of a cohesive whole.

High Life doesn’t suffer from any real clunkers and is more consistently sonically rewarding, so that makes it the ‘better’ album. And that’s what ultimately makes it the more frustrating of the two; even the more successful collection put together by Eno and Hyde is mostly just further proof that they haven’t yet made the album together that they’re clearly capable of.

The album is classy and appealing, and although it’s not particularly challenging, it’s still a lot more than just background music.

There are a few moments on the album that are clearer than the rest.

Even though not everything here quite works, the tracks that do are a great deal of fun and show Midler in fine form.

Too often does this Mary J. Blige record not actually feel like a Mary J. Blige record, and compounding that fundamental issue is the mere reality that so many of these songs piggyback the hottest genre of music in the world right now.

The problems with The Endless River are not so much what we are given, but what is left out. Without the vocals, something is very clearly missing and the listener is left wanting more.

While it’s thoughtful of Nicks to dig deep into her unreleased catalog, the middle third of the album drags on a little too much as the middle five songs can, and should have, all been cut down by a minute each.

A good time here, but not much more than that, alas.

Ultimately, Sweet Talker falls short of pop glory.

Without the flair for the unexpected that Owens made his reputation with, A New Testament feels like a counter intuitive statement for a songwriter whose known for having such a distinctive personality.

Ultimately, Motion is somewhat of a scattered album with some shining moments.

Dream Police feels here like its own project, like a stand-alone band just getting started. With that feeling comes excitement and discovery, but also a learning curve.

Right now, though, he’s just a force to realise. Not necessarily to be reckoned with.

The Buzzcocks deserve credit for continuing to craft new material, but after nearly 40 years, they also risk sounding sometimes like some bands they emulated, or mocked, who started long before them.

“Harder Than It Needs to Be” finds DiFranco hitting her stride, as it optimizes her knack for blending different musical genres—in this case, jazz with country and blues—and for delivering wisdom through clear, no-bullshit vocal inflections. If Allergic to Water had drawn upon these strengths more consistently, the album might have yielded a more delicately handled, astutely observed meditation on social and cultural issues that demand just as much attention now as ever.

Major League is a volatile act with a subtle streak. If the lyrics can catch up to the tunes, the band will be tough to ignore.

Overall, Weatherhouse is a good album that could be better if it were only redesigned around its own strengths.

Working with new producers has opened up his style, his writing, his approach, all in exciting ways. He just might need a more brutal editor going forward.

Because the songs are often about the tour or the people, the lyrics are often unrelatable, with one obvious exception: “100 Unread Messages.”

On Hold My Home, their attempt is a failure, featuring no virtuosity, no experimentation, no honesty, no power of any kind, just stodgy, empty confidence in place of anything worth saying.

Alas, the band only hits this sweet spot a few other times on Maximum Overload.

Without Burnett directly quarterbacking the affair, the sepia overlay that tinted Life Death Love and Freedom and No Better Than This is too transparent this time around.

It’s a mixed bag. Bundick is trying on a little bit of everything with Les Sins, perfecting nothing but never quite failing either.

The homogeneity is so pervasive that the few exceptions stand out.

Sometimes it sounds like a deathly serious joke. Other times, it sounds like nothing more than a nicely produced notion that happened to cross his mind one day.

As an experiment in radically rearranging existing music, this album is a massive success. As a listenable album, though, it falls a bit short.

While the songs are definitely different and eccentric, there’s a real lack of a notable melodies or hooks, and while the effort is there, Tyranny just doesn’t feel very memorable or significant.

The entire disc is pleasing to listen to even if a great majority of its hooks can’t be recalled less than an hour after the closing title track finishes playing.

Bringing Back the Sunshine is competent, but its sheer lack of variety, and over-reliance on trying to recapture the vibe of his previous effort sinks the album in a hurry. Best to label this one for die-hards only.

There’s simply not enough sonic variation going on here to make Soused nearly as compelling as its respective creators’ past efforts.

Bestial Burden is not much fun to listen to, even for those of us who take great pleasure in noisy, abstract, unhappy music. So if you really need to hit bottom and feel about as misanthropic and nauseous as possible in order to bounce back, Bestial Burden might be just the thing.

For a project that’s all about adding more and more dimensions to the Foxygen experience, something pretty basic but essential is missing here, the core of an identity for the band making the music.

Hungry Ghosts feels like two steps forward for OK Go and one step back.

Accented vocals, softened, clipped consonants and misshapen vowels help to make the familiar sound in some ways new, but ultimately proves to be little more than an exercise in revisionist revivalism of the emo varietal.

Unraveling may not be the best We Were Promised Jetpacks record, which still goes to These Four Walls, but it is the album that demarcates a clear if ultimately less certain direction.

Ambition is a necessary component of success for the up-and-coming producer who’s competing with a sea of unassuming copycats and clones, but he’s found that it is possible to go too far.

For the most part, This Will Destroy You finds its footing on the slow burn, crawling along at a snail’s pace, rarely straying from an established formula (quiet, brooding intro, slow build/hard dynamic shift half to three quarters of the way through, louder still) that, over the course of a whole album, can be somewhat draining.

Nothing on Wild Animals is interesting or distinct enough to set Trampled By Turtles apart in this increasingly crowded genre.

The atmospheric jangle of the title track has that Pumpkins-esque fuzziness, too. The other half of this EP is too by-the-numbers to recall.

Sadier seems to have taken a new direction with Something Shines, finding a nice middle ground between her last two albums, yet somehow erring a little too far on the side of safety.

Gone are the darker, more gothic underpinnings of her previous efforts, replaced by a shimmering, gossamer pop sheen that carries with it only shadow elements of her former sound.

Ultimately, Cheek to Cheek is pleasant through and through. It’s not the greatest standards duets album ever recorded, but nor is it a dud.

Yeah, his lead guitar playing is strong and yeah, his idiosyncratic voice has its charms, but much of the material is forgettable, most of the songs washing one into the other into the other.

The Breaks is just a pretty good pop album.

On her own behind the piano or over drum programming, the songs sound sad in a somehow less convincing way, perhaps because so much of the rest of the record doesn’t try as hard to convince us of the hurt and does anyway.

So much promise and so little worth revisiting, Zoot Woman’s eagerly anticipated return to the electronic music scene rarely reaches the glittering heights of its shimmering title.

Although heavy in pretty atmosphere, Savage Imagination often lacks immediacy; this problem might be resolvable through live improvisation.

While Art Official Age is assuredly the more melodically assured of the two discs, PLECTRUMELECTRUM is at times way more fun, with Prince unleashing his iconic guitar skills in a litany of rockers that call to mind early cult favorites like 1979’s “Bambi” before falling into a generic pop spiral that he never really recovers from.

The journeyman ready-mades of We Are Only What We Feel betray a basic incomprehension and simultaneous exploitation of disposable music.

If We Loved Her Dearly is any indication, Lowell has simply run out of material, if not ideas, musical or otherwise.

Mended With Gold shines and wilts in equal measure. For each injection of bombast draws the band further and further from their essential qualities. And yet, this departure, too, was inevitable.

Gothic is another solid set, but you can also feel Hildebrand finding the borders on a sound that has the potential to sound limitless.

On Lullaby, the vocalist and songwriter certainly makes good on that declaration, his refreshing lack of desperation taking shape in a melting pot of Americana, new age and electronic music.

This is a fresh, young band, attractive in sound and approach, playing music with echoes of many great indie-pop bands of the past.

Essentially what the Juan MacLean have here is a straightforward pop album, but as with the worst pop albums, the amount of filler overwhelms the killer.

As refreshing and legitimately good as the second half of Donker Mag is, it’s still not a great album overall. It’s peppered with weak lines, horrid skits, and moments of misogyny so objectionable that you can’t hit skip fast enough.

Without any true sonic signifiers to really separate this record from Drozd and Coyne’s primary outfit, it simply feels like another of the Flaming Lips’ disposable ideas that are fun for a few weeks.

Mean Love never fails to be smooth, and it displays a particular kind of open ear. For some, that will be enough.

A majority of Songs of Innocence shows the band fumbling around with current chart trends, settling for melodies and lyrics that are simply “good enough,” and generally making moves that reek of desperation instead of confidence, a stance that is very ill-fitting of U2.

Taking the piss by playing against type, Hitchcock’s The Man Upstairs is devoid of any mystery or humor, refuting the claim that “A Robyn Hitchcock album always sounds like a Robyn Hitchcock album.”

The album fails to suspend disbelief. In the end, Annabel Dream Reader is mere pulp fiction.

Avi Buffalo have achieved this in theory, but the product is a mostly unremarkable follow-up to a promising debut.

Those that didn’t enjoy Skull Orchard before won’t be won over, but it doesn’t change the fact that those naysayers have conspicuously terrible taste.

Green Language is by no means a bad album, but there are glimpses of an adrenaline shot of a record that could have been made.

Haven’t Got The Blues (Yet) is best taken in small, doctor-recommended doses so as to avoid any adverse side effects brought on by the broader, more observational-minded humor on display here.

More than just asserting his countryness, Moonshine in the Trunk seems like an effort to re-assert his Paisley-ness, to get back to the sort of songs that first got him commercial attention.

If you’re in it for the live-it-up-till-morning jams (and they are entertaining), then you’re going to be spinning this record at plenty of house parties. But artistically speaking, the album isn’t a progression of the rapper’s career; it’s content to stay on the same eternally- stoned playing field as 2012’s O.N.I.F.C.

An album that at best struggles to be exceptional and at worst is nearly unlistenable.

As far as lightweight, easy-listening charts pop goes, V doesn’t totally offend the sensibilities, and that’s surely more than can be said about some of Maroon 5’s overly pandering, less exploratory “pop-rock” peers.

The result, then, frustratingly enough for fans who wanted something significant in the face of the Knife’s impending dissolution, is neither bad nor terribly essential; nice enough to have, but more a marker of where these still-vital artists were when it stopped being fun than anything more crucial.

Barragán is not overtly accessible--it does take a few listens to warm up to it--but it’s so all over the map and light that it just feels like a palate cleansing exercise.

Rentals boosters probably won’t be able to shake off the fact that Lost in Alphaville is just way too familiar for its own good.

Brill Bruisers is a solid, satisfying record, one that found a fresh approach and created some more ultra-catchy pop tunes. If the freshness dulls on occasion when the new approach gets overused, you can still hear the quality underneath, even if you’re more inclined to move the needle back to the tunes that leave their bruise more immediately.

It’s hard to strike a balance in music between the sound of isolation and the connection to an audience. Mirel Wagner finds that tether more often than not on this album, but sometimes it’s so dark that that tie is hard to see.

It’s safe, which only gets The Breeze so far, but, this record will undoubtedly get a lot of people to revisit, or discover JJ Cale, which is a win in itself.