Even with an album's worth of new material, there's something missing here; the format might be Herculean in scale, but Craig's efforts don't match up.

It's a wild, theatrical and, at times, bloated ride.

Like most Caribou albums, Our Love is a grower.

Magazine 13 doesn't feel like a coherent album so much as a more open-ended platform for the same thing we get on his 12-inches.

For sure, Animal Collective still have plenty of whimsical creativity left in them, but on Painting With they mostly color inside the lines.

While a clearing of the cobwebs is liberating for the artist, the resulting record is a tough sell for its audience, even one as dedicated as Vladislav Delay's. Rakka could be a step towards something great. But too often, getting through it is like walking with a stone in your shoe.

ESTOILE NAIANT is perfectly pleasant while it’s playing, but you might not remember it so well afterwards.

What she's lost in subtlety she's gained in star power, off the back of two years of touring and a slow-burning hit album.

Food might sound pretty, but it's weaker than the sum of its parts.

Copeland is an accomplished collage artist adept at combining the highbrow and the trashy, but when the individual bits are laid out on their own they can seem a bit throwaway.

Born In The Echoes follows the duo's formula of saving the more psychedelic tracks for the end.

Considering the odds, it shows an animated and still vigorous trio worthy of its semi-legendary status.

Though not without its charms, the floundering moments of Crash suggests that Charli XCX may be most comfortable making subversive music.

His fans might find this fascinating. For anyone else, there are better entry points into Jonson's catalogue.

It's an unadventurous but pleasant effort from a talented artist who used to make everyone else look boring.

Coming from a producer who habitually finds new ways to dazzle, Pearson Sound is uncharacteristically average.

Beyoncé is clearly itching to experiment with her sound. This latest album may not be her most cohesive release, but it does come with a handful of well-executed surprises. ... The album falls flat when it tries too hard to immerse itself in a culture that does not belong to Beyoncé.

While Orbits is a tighter record, its joints are still too weak to hold it all up.

Brandt Brauer Frick's contribution to the series, while not a classic, is still a little treasure trove.

These songs still aim to elicit an emotion from you, and they're still not particularly subtle. The difference is you don't feel like it's being shoved down your throat.

Feel It Break feels a bit front-loaded: its second half sags a bit with more ballad-oriented material, but closes on a strong note with "The Beast."

It never fully sounds laid back, as if the producer is unwilling to let his sounds run as rampant or give into the funk quite like his Californian counterparts.

Pagan is a singular vision. There's plenty to enjoy--no individual track is a misstep. But consumed as whole, Pagan goes from sugary pop to sickly sweet, and is ultimately unsatisfying.

Perhaps most frustratingly, Scintilli doesn't have as much of a sense of continuum as the aforementioned trilogy--which is something that any good album should have.

The album is overproduced and polished to a fault, often vague and uninteresting. It's the defining characteristic of Become Alive. The individual performances are undeniably full of flavor and complexity, but put together they can overwhelm.

Factory Floor's aesthetic is rarely comforting, and yet their new music settles into itself as it revisits old habits.

Their tenth LP, For That Beautiful Feeling, returns to their well-established formula once again, at times surging with renewed ambition and other times falling curiously flat.

Sometimes producers catch a wave, sometimes they wipe out. But this theory is quickly rubbished by Hauff's own back catalogue. She's released consistent albums and EPs that said a lot with a little. Qualm achieves the same, but only in moments.