Ultimately, what you at times get is a watered-down version of Future Nostalgia, a record that feels adrift — even from Lipa herself. We didn’t expect her to cover Blur’s “Tender,” or drop her own line of lava lamps, but we were hoping for something a little more distinct.

[Future] offers a notably strong chorus on “Running Out of Time,” and bounces energetically on “Fried (She a Vibe).” But his performances on tracks like “GTA” and “Ain’t No Love” sound dreary. We Don’t Trust You feels longer than its hour runtime, despite several decent cuts. The album isn’t bad: Metro remains a fascinating producer, and Future manages to hold his own despite his well-worn tics. But it only takes a single Lamar verse to show what the game’s been missing.

It could have stood to cut five or six entries, starting with “Memphis.” That would have left “Fuckin’ Up the Disco,” an homage to his own “Let the Groove Get In,” as the album’s opening track — a starting point that motions towards what does work about the album versus the places in which it completely falls flat.

It’s another daring swerve, but while she often arrives at genuine moments of beauty, the end result is uneven.

2093 takes enough daring leaps out of typical Yeat territory to warrant repeat listens, but Yeat’s ambition ends up being the album’s undoing. At 78 minutes, 2093 ends up feeling monotonous, even as Yeat’s exploration into new sounds and cadences yields occasionally interesting results.

Vultures is a serviceable record. The production, in typical post-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy fashion, is sparse. While it won’t be confused for a masterpiece, it shows that West is still good at being a producer. He puts Ty Dolla Sign in position to sound as bubbly as he’s been since the Obama era.

Dolly’s warmth, up-for-anything spirit, and common touch bring almost everything she does endearingly down to earth, and at 77, she’s able to hold her own and work well with every heavy hitter who rolls through. .... The new material struggles to get noticed amid all of the classic-rock fireworks. It also might’ve been nice if more songs had been culled from her own story.

As a representative of a modern production-by-committee rap album in 2023, Set It Off achieves a modest goal of being erratic yet diverting.

Drake meanders through yet another collection of superlong streaming bait. For All the Dogs may have its sparks. But too often, he settles for subliminal bars aimed at rivals like Kanye West and Pusha T, keeping it “gangsta” by putting down women and, of course, filling up the piggy bank.

Do You Sleep at Night offers little in terms of actual ingenuity. Instead, it presents a smattering of existing tropes thrown at the wall with little in terms of depth.

The reality is that while Scott is a masterful curator, he’s just an OK rapper. Those two realities are discordant for too many moments on Utopia.

Almost every track finds Post in some tortured posture like this, singing cheerily into a bottle he’s doomed to finish. They’re largely fine songs, and clever, but lighter than Post seems to want them to be.

Is it too much? Reader, it’s way too much. But it’s hard to say it doesn’t work when “too much” was clearly the point. It’s less “a swing and a miss” than “a swing that rips open a hole in the time-space continuum.”

Such moments excepted ["Oh U Went" and "Wit the Racks"], the content of Business Is Business feels bland, especially for an expectations-thwarting artist like Thug.

Of course, even the weaker songs have their dance-floor potential. Petras is, above all else, a pure fan of pop music and the feeling it exudes. But in chasing her new status as the type of pop star who has Top 40 potential, she abandoned the freakishly forward-thinking personality that built her a base to begin with. Here, the beast has been tamed.

Ideally, Durk would have cut five or so songs and tightened Almost Healed into a clearer portrait of his struggle to leave his pistol-scarred past behind. Instead, he offers his fans a buffet of listening options, some better than others.

Give her credit for trying to turn her growing pains into prickly, sometimes enjoyable art, even if the Pieces don’t always match the overall effort.

Across 19 tracks, the metamorphosis isn’t exactly comprehensive: about a third of the songs here sound submerged in the fog of his early records, and another third are too sketch-like to land as well as the best songs do.

It is another Don Toliver album, recommended if you like the other Don Toliver albums. The opener sets the temperature, and it is perfectly temperate, full of springy trap drums, pointillist guitars, and a whole host of Dons Toliver, alternately spectral and keening, dissolving in and out of focus. ... At this point, it’s worth considering his superficiality more of a feature than a bug.

This megadose of Wallen doesn’t only ensure that One Thing at a Time will be lodged at the top of the charts for a while — alongside Dangerous, which is currently at Number Five on the Billboard 200 — it also reveals his preferred musical and lyrical tropes, as well as his fondness for simple, slippery vocal melodies that easily stick in listeners’ brains.

He sticks to the persona he established with his 2016 mixtape The Artist, evoking a young man whose rap life affords him every desire, yet still gets rattled when a relationship goes sideways, or when opps cross him in the streets. These are themes he mines over and over, deploying melodious hooks and diaristic lyrics to keep them fresh. The result is an hour-plus album with few surprises.

On the frisky and more limber Act 1. ... Working with an assortment of collaborators, including producer and songwriter Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, members of the soul-revivalist band the Dap-Kings, and nimble modern producers like Tone and Some Randoms, Legend sets his smooth, elastic voice to the most seductive and slinkiest grooves of his career. ... On Act 2, Legend succumbs to his usual supper-club decorum.

Only Built for Infinity Links find Quavo and Takeoff more than capable of conjuring the old Migos magic by themselves. It’s a patchy collection that seems to go on a bit too long despite a 59-minute running time.

Listening to Khaled’s albums is like searching for blessings amidst the chaff, and the signal-to-noise ratio is generally low. But God Did isn’t as torturously bad as, say, 2019’s Father of Asahd.

Swift came out of the gate sounding bright-eyed but remarkably seasoned. [December 5, 2012]

At 30 tracks and classified as his fourth album, The Last Slimeto feels like an overstuffed, overlong and sometimes-compelling compact disc from the No Limit years.

At times, 2000 strains under its ambition. It’s unclear whether Bada$$ wants to build an Important Album or simply release something commensurate with his growing celebrity.

If only the lyrics were as articulate as the melodies and playing. [Jul - Aug 22, p.120]

On the occasions when his slinky guitar takes center stage — like on melancholy instrumental renditions of the Pet Sounds tracks “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” and “Caroline, No,” or the first half of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” — the results are predictably serviceable. But Depp’s pro forma, double-tracked vocals provide scant additional justification for the project’s existence; and in a few unfortunate cases (like when he attempts a soul croon on Smokey Robinson’s “Ooo Baby Baby”) you won’t be able to find the skip button fast enough.

This fire hose of arch-pop cleverness will overload even the sharpest mind. [Jul - Aug 2022, p.120]

black midi take a serious detour into pretentious overreach here. [Jul - Aug 2022, p.120]

Isn't quite as transportingly charming as their past couple. [Jun 2022, p.74]

McRae’s debut doesn’t exactly make her stand out from the sea of algorithmic pop girls, but it definitely shows promise.

There are magical moments on Come Home the Kids Miss You to be found amidst a primal need to sex his female fans.

All of these gestures are deeply in earnest, and some of them even feel earned. But it’s hard not to hear We as the sound of a band hopefully setting things back in order, with better adventures to come.

Unfortunately, Fear of the Dawn — the first of two records White will release this year — feels like a hodgepodge of good intentions and so-so execution.

For the most part, Kelly uses rock to express his pain and rap to escape from it, i.e., abusing substances with Lil Wayne on two fairly pointless tracks. He has a nice rapport with Iann Dior on the pleasant pop-rock exercise “Fake Love Don’t Last.” But whether Kelly deploys “rock,” “rap,” or “pop,” selling out and annoying people online are the least of his issues.

Grading on a curve, the composition, “Opening Night,” deserves a solid B. It’s dorky, catchy, and whimsical. ... The rest of their springtime retreat sounds generally more Weezerish. ... As with the corniness of “Opening Night,” Cuomo’s strong knack for vocal melodies throughout saves a lot of otherwise half-baked or cliched lyrics.

Most of Spiritualized's ninth LP comes off intricate, elastic, and soulful. [Mar 2022, p.71]

Run, Rose, Run is an impressive display of Parton’s songwriting and vocal mastery that nevertheless leaves one hoping she one day releases the classic late-era record she’s so clearly primed to make, should she choose.

A prickly selection of psychedelic R&B and proto-funk. [Feb 2022, p.72]

When Jonathan Davis sings "I know this all sounds so cliché," on "Lost In The Grandeur," he's pretty much right. [Feb 2022, p.72]

Time Skiffs splits the difference between the pop and the avant, spaced-out family-pad music with solid drumming, deep-distance percussion, wobbly melodies, and harmonies somehow more blissed out than anything else.

This record isn’t the return to form that it aims to be, but Chainz is back in his element here.

She often sounds invigorated as the record breezes through multiple styles of R&B as well as afropop, house, and funk. ... Unfortunately, her shapeshifting gets short-circuited by hamfisted writing, especially as the album’s space theme gets less playful and more literal.

Won't surprise anyone, but its upbeat feel and finely wrought prettiness will satisfy Luministas for sure. [Jan 2022, p.71]

There are moments that'll sate Policeheads, along with jazz touches, folk storytelling, and an Otis Redding reading. [Jan 2022, p.71]

It’s all modestly pleasant to listen to. But if he wants to resurrect Def Jam as a true cultural force and not just a legacy imprint in the UMG galaxy, he’ll have to bring stronger smoke than The Algorithm.

He’s equally rooted in old-school melody and beat-derived new-century songwriting. In its best moments, = brings together those two worlds. ... Yet as genuinely in love as he appears, his devotional songs tend to bog down in generalized sentiments and gooier melodies.

Even if this project probably won’t give us any fresh entrants into the large canon of classic Elton songs, The Lockdown Sessions is still a glowing testament to his enduring pop gravitas.

“Infinity Sign,” with its pastel-colored disco bounce, New Age keyboards, and distant sample of a chanting crowd that sounds like a Close Encounters visitation over a sold-out soccer stadium. That unique level of thematic specificity notwithstanding, the record itself doesn’t get weighed down by any sort of Rush-size storyline, nor is there some pain-in-the-ass heavy-handed sci-fi message to deal with (beyond the predictably intimated vibes of harmony, wonder, etc.).

While his pretensions can at times make things a little awkward (see the impressionistic piano piece “Peaches Etude”), there’s an admirable idealism in his desire to write earnest songs in a cynical age, and those songs can end up leaving a clear, large mark on your emotions.

The album does have its share of standout moments. ... But Don Toliver remains, perhaps intentionally, impenetrably enigmatic. In a culture replete with mysterious superstars, it makes Life of a Don ultimately a bit frustrating.

The album doesn’t contain much that he hasn’t done better before, and he rarely sounds as good breaking bread with Billboard Hot 100 heroes like Young Thug and Lil Uzi Vert as he does by himself. But when he’s in a zone, railing valiantly against frenemies and past lovers real and perceived, there’s no one better.

A superhero team-up that has produced another album of rock-solid takes on the American songbook.

There’s enough evidence on A Beautiful Revolution, Pt. 2 to suggest that he still cares about music, but it may take more than mellow bromides and Obama shout-outs to truly convince us.

Donda occasionally gestures toward the truly shapeless writing on that LP [Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red] but stops short of sounding as if West is truly articulating his id.

As much as you have to admire Simpson for making such an oddball and ambitious record, the album rarely transcends its tale.

Stretches further into his trademark laid-back R&B. [Jul/Aug 2021, p.133]

Can evoke an Americana-tinged Warren Zevon, gruff but tender, with the best songs featuring Shelby Lynne's empathetic vocals. [Jul/Aug 2021, p.133]

Faith consists of audio files recombined by producers and record executives into something coherent, listenable, and at times even enjoyable, but not quite dazzling. Maybe it’s not an Anthony Bourdain doc constructed with artificial intelligence, but it still feels a bit weird.

The more upbeat, jazzy “Stones of Silence” on which Beth shows off the full Patti Smithiness of her voice is a welcome moment of invigoration on an otherwise sleepy album.

Like many Modest Mouse records, The Golden Casket sounds cluttered and that’s likely how they want it. They never define what “the golden casket” is on the album, but too often, it seems like the phrase might be a metaphor for their own hermetically sealed instincts.

Some cuts have strong hooks and others don’t, though the duo’s chant of “I need medical” on “Medical” stands out. Eventually, it starts to sound like an 18-track blowout that’s taking a bit too long to wrap up. All in all, The Voice of the Heroes isn’t bad.

What the album could use is a few more drink-clinking splashes of summertime fun, but despite the usual army of A-list writers and producers, there isn’t really anything here to rival the sticky, inescapable punch of “Sugar” or “Moves Like Jagger.” A little more escape might’ve been welcome. But whether it’s trying to be light, serious, or somewhere in the middle, Jordi can only get it done in half-measures.

Pleasantly ornate pop with classical flourishes. [Jun 2021, p.77]

Like a Maroon 5 with some vulnerability beneath the pop sheen. [Jun 2021, p.77]

Landing somewhere between a posthumous tribute and a completed album, Exodus feels like a view of DMX as a product instead of DMX as an artist.

While Brown's easygoing, singing guitar is the clear star throughout the record, something feels off overall, since the renditions here rarely live up to the originals. [May 2021, p.75]

The best is from Phoebe Bridgers, giving the bright, synthy "Seize the Day" a sad-girl makeover. [May 2021, p.76]

Most of these [80s metal] sonic and lyrical allusions immediately give way to the kind of crisp, automatically catchy power-pop you’d hear on any Weezer album. ... Unsurprisingly, it’s the bright, smiling, spandex-y pop side of metal he loves, not the macho misanthrope side — there’s a reason the record is called Van Weezer, not Weezer Bloody Weezer.

On the vast majority of Latest Record Project, he’s resorted to presenting off-the-cuff emotional reactions (and similarly tossed-off arrangements) as though they’re finished products. The result is a sometimes amusing, sometimes frustrating, sparsely thrilling, and largely unlistenable collection of rants and riffs.

The lyrics strain to demonstrate cleverness (the opening line of “Little Did I Know” rhymes “Shakespearean” with “experience” and “delirious”) or simulate personal experience (“History” quizzes a new lover “At what age did you have sex?/Did you have a teenage phase with cigarettes?” she asks her lover). But the overall effect is neither personal nor universal.

Yachty is a great ambassador for Michigan rap, but as Michigan Boy Boat illustrates, he’s far from the best practitioner of the style. He is the protagonist of the mixtape, but he isn’t its anchor.

While Greta Van Fleet excel at erecting houses of the retro-rock holy, they struggle a bit at the basics - like memorable songwriting, and especially lyrics. [Apr 2021, p.72]

Sure, there are the big choruses, bigger guitar riffs, and smart-alecky Nielsenisms that their die-hard cult craves, but at the same time, songs like “The Summer Looks Good on You” and “Light Up the Fire” sound like Cheap Trick by Numbers.

Sting is in smooth sophisticate mode. [Apr 2021, p.73]

Ultimately Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over delivers on the promise of the first half of its title, and skimps on the second. She’s been through hell, it’s clear. But her music isn’t clear about how she wants to begin again.

He’s certainly matured as a singer, and navigates these songs impressively, but that doesn’t mean he’s developed much of a vocal identity. He’s only as good as the songs he sings. Fortunately, the album closes with two huge, very different ballads that are perfect for him.

A clunky mix of late-Nineties easy listening and 2000s emo pop. [Mar 2021, p.73]

His warbled ballads are teeth pulls, but his crisp, catchy alt-pop zone outs remain undeniable. [Mar 2021, p.73]

The music often seems to float away before giving you much to grasp onto. [Mar 2021, p.73]

What Music lacks is a great hit to pull it all into focus.

A misfire that will only make you miss the brothers' harmonies even more. [Feb 2021, p.73]

Dangerous is most affecting when Wallen’s husky, emotive voice does the heavy lifting. ... The flaws of Dangerous, apart from being 17 songs too long, is that Wallen does not always seem up to the heavy task of pumping fresh life into well-worn topics.

With Side B, it’s more of the same.

Deliver typically gray tales of Trump-era American demise. [Dec 2020, p.70]

A charming concept. [Dec 2020, p.70]

His music might still be relatable, but it has never sounded so cliché.

It may be [Future's] best collaborative project this side of Free Bricks. While he sounds flat at moments—he appears to be positively winded on the opener “Stripes like Burberry”— Uzi’s Naruto-loving luminescence radiates from every bar.

Rather than a through-line back to the Pumpkins’ trip-hoppy Adore, Cyr often sounds like Corgan was going for a new-wave sound that recalls Talk Talk, and unfortunately he has neither the singular vision he had in the Nineties nor the melodic savvy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis to pull it off. Instead, most of the songs, all filled with neo-goth romantic lyrics, stumble and fumble over meandering melodies with no sing-along choruses to buttress them.

Music is the Weapon is a stale, mixed bag that aspires to the global ubiquity and incredible commercial success of Major Lazer’s 2015 spastic moombahton anthem “Lean On.”

Love Goes doesn’t quite have overwhelming moments to match the titanic power of signature hits like “Latch,” Smith’s career-making hit with house duo Disclosure, or 2017’s “Him.” In some ways, that’s OK.

The result is a set of forlorn ballads that start spare and gather beauty as they grow.

“Close My Eyes” feels a bit like Suicide pretending to be a power-pop band with its quivering keys and its catchy “In my mind I want to choose the right” chorus. The glitchy “Hard Times” balances Butler’s brooding with disco-house keyboards, and “Surrender” feels like a gospel call-and-response moment of ascendency. But it all comes crashing down on Generations’ final two offerings.

These overly literal ditties feel a little too simplistic. [Sep 2020, p.68]

This batch of cadaverous Bowie-isms won't leave fang marks on your memory. [Sep 2020, p.68]

Doves amble as they surge, swirling in a middle distance between Radiohead and Coldplay. [Sep 2020, p.68]