The sound quality is, by all accounts, mediocre, but the raw nature of the music reflects the “one day” aspect of their motto.

Port of Morrow seems much more a step sideways than forward for Mercer, not so much a dramatic comeback but more a compilation of greatest hits masquerading as new songs.

In the realm of Sigur Rós, it's akin to breathing plain fresh air: in some contexts, refreshing, but in others, just... there.

With cliches becoming scarcer, there is clearly lyrical growth evident, yet one could hardly call them ground-breaking or especially relatable.

Go Now and Live is by no means a bad album, since it is a solidly composed, straight-ahead rock release with some satisfyingly driving rhythms. The experience may even assist the growth of this talented band, rather than hamper it. Too often though, the songwriting feels incomplete.

It’s still a well-produced record that plods along with a rustic charm and the occasional hook, but anyone who has followed Morby throughout his career knows he could be an icon in the modern indie-folk scene. Since 2017, however, it’s been a collage of pretty, forgettable albums. As it stands, Kevin Morby is as Kevin Morby does.

It's contorted, full of loose ends, songwriting peculiarities and recurring cryptic imagery, and, although many individual moments do overtly recall other artists, it hangs together with such an uneasy balance of inner tension and stubbornly foregrounded idiosyncrasies that you will be unlikely to mistake it for anyone else.

While Saints Of Los Angeles is occasionally stunning, as is consistent with Sixx’s recent return to form, it often sounds too much like something Nikki Sixx would expect Crüe fans to like, rather than the top-class rock n’ roll he’s time-and-time-again proven himself capable of making.

While sounding more like a compilation of singles than a fully cohesive album, One Love could in fact be the release that finally wins over both the dedicated weekend club-goers, as well as the stay-at-home older generation looking to revisit their youth.

She & Him's debut release is more like a collection of songs rather than a cohesive, fresh album, and as such, is a letdown for a singer that showed a lot of promise.

With Resistance is Futile, they’ve finally caught up with their own reality and decided to produce the one album they never made; a serviceable rock album.

The worst thing about Born To Die is that even its great songs contain problems.

Notes on a Conditional Form is The 1975 as we know them – just good enough to not be bad.

There's a huge promise to Fleet Foxes, one that can't be ignored, but Pecknold and the rest of the guys haven't tapped into it yet.

An album this tepid--which is to say, not completely tepid, but tepid enough--from a talent that immense, though, can only register as a minor failure. She can do better. The sonic virtues of her performance on Pang, however mixed, guarantee that I'll be listening.

All of the material here is passable, with a few highlights that will surely leave a positive impression on listeners.

When it's good, it's really good. Otherwise, it's never really bad, just excessive and somewhat unfocused.

eternal sunshine, at 35 minutes, doesn’t leave much of an impression, its titular statement of pretty regard for memories lost and time regained ultimately registering not as a platform for yearning nor as a vehicle for regret nor as ironic joke nor social commentary but as the broadest possible thread of aesthetic inspiration for pretty regard for such immaterial concepts as memories, time, gain, loss. The songwriting is the main culprit

End is better than passable - I’ve heard far worse even in its genre. But, as things are, this record feels redundant. Explosions in the Sky, at this stage of their careers, need to give us a whole lot more in order to really deliver. Maybe that’s not fair, but let me tell ya somethin’, kid: life ain’t always fair.

The second half of the album is much more consistent if you still feel like listening, but beyond a spare moment or two (“This Blackest Purse” is surprisingly touching), most of Eskimo Snow is easily surpassed by other songs from Why?’s catalogue.

The inconsistencies within Green Language, unfortunately, undermine the potential beauty of the album’s closing few minutes.

The first three songs will undoubtedly hook any listener into continuing the album, but the listener will find nothing as impressive as that opening statement.

Fans of the band will have a blast for as long as this one lasts, feel proud for the old boys, and probably revisit it very rarely in the future.

Ultimately Kids in the Street will go down as a solid album that is an ambitious and interesting grower... Nothing more, nothing less.

Similes is, while a pretty record, oddly disjointed, a collection of pretty chord changes without an identity to give it life.

Kintsugi suffers from many of the same flaws that have afflicted past releases, from a tendency to overthink arrangements to Gibbard’s more frequent relapses into trite turns of phrase and the occasional hint of immaturity.

There is really nothing bad about what Opeth have presented us here, but after ten full lengths they're starting to develop a moderate case of Dream Theater syndrome, although obviously less self-indulgent.

There are just a few riffs and grating melodies that spoil what could have been an album that was at least as strong as its predecessor.