It feels disjointed and incomplete.

Cuomo seems to have found his commercial home embracing a beach-party rock flavor for California kids who’ll “throw you a lifeline” and “show you the sunshine”, and indeed the beach tone persists through the album. This should be fine and modest, but in Weezer’s hands it’s just too overbearingly gross-sounding to let off that easy.

Vroom Vroom might have worked had Charli written some better hooks, or actually put some effort into her raps, or just not rapped at all. Or if even Charli had coasted, just as she does here, and Sophie taken the reins.

“Kevin” and “White Privilege II”, obvious attempts to spark political discourse, see an artist not afraid to speak his mind. It makes meme-chasing moments like “Brad Pitt’s Cousin” and “Dance-Off” all the more forgettable.

Throughout ColleGrove, the dominant statement that seems to be made is one of discordancy and dullness. Wherever these two succeed, there is always an antithesis to mute the momentum.

EVOL is the first time we begin to hear the ostensible rigidity in Future's formula revealing itself.

There’s honestly no real low moment on Life of Pause, but then again, low moments were never this album’s problem. The problem is that there’s really only one high moment.

The only thing that comes through is that it’s competent. That’s enough to be pretty, but it still has the unremarkable safety of a band that hasn’t broken through to find a distinct voice.

Is the Is Are is certainly honest, but it could use a little more optimism, and the music’s circuitousness only adds to the feeling that a single issue is being poked and prodded to exhaustion.

Rarely does The Documentary 2 feel, or sound, important enough to warrant a double album, especially not one that spans three hours. The Documentary 2 perhaps works best when Game suffuses tracks with growing pains.

Del Rey has struggled to back up her provocations with substance. Ultraviolence was an exception, a singular breakthrough. Honeymoon is, sadly, a slip and fall after a promising stride forward.

It finds Prince embracing EDM and his band 3rd Eye Girl lays down some sturdy, derivative grooves that ought to signal bathroom breaks and beer runs at shows to come.

Ostensibly their pop record, this brisk, 29-minute album album runs out of ideas in the first ten.

Throughout, tracks will leave you with a noticeably bittersweet aftertaste--although it isn’t exactly lacking in flavor. It’s as though the album is missing a secret ingredient, or doesn’t ever find the right blend.

Secondhand Rapture was inconsistent and uneven at points, but it also drew some power from its unpredictability. Its successor is twelve straight tracks of mostly the same thing: worn pop clichés. This dullness plagues the album from start to finish despite Plapinger’s best attempts at shouting through the monotony.

The record’s occasionally bright moments are swallowed up by scattered thoughts and stale beats.

Even if we were to give ALLA’s abysmal lyrics a pass, the production doesn't help, either.... Still, Rocky can, at times, be an engaging figure that radiates charisma when he wants.

Chrissybaby Forever is the music of Owens’ heart--unfiltered and unpolished, both to its credit and its detriment.

The fun here is manufactured beyond belief, sometimes for better, but more often for worse.

The album doesn’t take nearly enough risks.

Born Under Saturn is only intermittently gripping. Certain tracks feel heavily procedural and oddly joyless given the album’s lighthearted tone.

The art-rock band’s third LP Infinite House combines tentative dips into R&B and soul with a firm foundation in jittery, spindly, angular NYC rock, resulting in pop songs with a deliberately nervous, ungainly, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink feel to them.

Discarding the albums actually awesome opener, “No Room in Frame”,--which briefly had me hoping for some tangible musical progress from the band--Kintsugi is more or less 45 minutes of boy-next-door, paint-by-number indie pop

This is Diamandis’ break-up album in more ways than the romantic sense. She also severs ties with popular expectation, and the end result is regressive rather than revolutionary.

If you never liked APTBS, odds are you’re not about to start here.

Despite its numerous shortcomings though, it’s a difficult album to completely dislike--largely because of its wistful, nostalgia-inducing melodies. But it’s impossible not to expect better from the former Oasis mastermind.

At its best, Rebel Heart has an ease, and a long absent softness, qualities sorely missed since her last masterwork Music. For every godawful moment, which come and go with a sad frequency on Rebel Heart, there are glimmers of virtuosity buried within the overworked mess.

The issue is in direction, and the real issue is that there doesn’t seem to be any.