Sure, the lyrics are better, the songs aren’t quite as boring, but it’s becoming harder and harder to defend this band on the charge of being dad rock.

Ultimately, Promise Everything is a solid collection of songs written by a band that, over the course of 3 albums, have shown that they rarely write a bad song. However, the majority of the songs feel a little too secure within their own skin; a little too tentative to deviate from the safety of their rough midtempo origins.

What’s frustrating is the way in which Typhoons signals the less ambitious intentions of a band surely destined for more, such that its inconsistencies compound and shortcomings shine.

A Kiss For the Whole World remains eminently-listenable low-calorie fun despite its intermittent slip ups.

The very things that inspired Maybeshewill to make music in the first place--social unrest and robust melodies--are both absent on Fair Youth, and there isn’t a whole lot left to take their place.

Unfortunately, it’s an LP which simply lacks reward... Both for listeners and, ultimately, the band.

Mirror Reaper is a challenging album to listen to on multiple fronts. On the one hand, it is oppressive and deep music, wrought with heavy themes and even heavier aesthetics. On the other hand, it challenges the listener's patience with overcooked ideas that threaten to spoil what is otherwise an immaculately produced record.

Omens shows some return to form, but couldn’t hold a stiff one against the likes of Ashes Of The Wake, Sacrement or VII: Sturm und Drang and that’s not at all Cruz’s fault.

Lyrically, it’s inconsistent, and doesn’t serve its title or occasional flirtations with current events very well besides a few references smattered in every other song. Musically, though, it feels more disposable than before, and less beholden to locking into deeper, more resonant grooves.

In the Lonely Hour is less meaningless and vapid than a song as unapologetically hammy as “Classic,” but the result is unfortunately the same.

New Material is an album that achieves a lot, but accepts failure as an option and takes it with a begrudging grace. So much can be made out of the stories told in the album's songs, but with the general lack of ideas, the role of the doomsayer is running its course for Preoccupations.

A good-to-great set of songs, that would make a fire mixtape if you cut the energy-draining bores "RUNITUP" and "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE"? A half-finished classic album, powered by reckless abandon and thrilling energy, but too scattershot to make it over the finish line? It's both, and neither, and I don't know, man. ... Call Me If You Get Lost is too busy shooting itself in the foot and calling it coming down to earth to be complete, but following along with its fragmented course down is still an exercise worth engaging in.

Good at Falling makes little headway into its own unique musical space, that’s something fans can hopefully expect in the future as Bain continues to distance herself from this vigilantly-traced launching pad. For now, here’s to another round of synth-laden pop balladry.

While the album’s too inconsistent in style to be considered a successful change of pace for the group, it’s at least a promising sign of things to come.

This is the kind of music Shearwater plays best--the it gives the band the space they need. It is a damned shame most of Fellow Travelers opposes this idea, with songs that are defined too rigidly for the Texan reimaginists.

The majority of this new record feels stuck in a chordal rut. The dynamic tension between the musical surface and the tonal depth is alive and well, but Disappeared serves as an excellent reminder that good rock music needs more than just ideas to thrive.

Whilst by no means an unmitigated disaster, Michael fails to do much of anything beyond that which we already knew was well within its namesake’s capabilities.

Despite its frustratingly monadic nature Howl does hold attention.

Mercurial Bay is bland and overpolished and probably insecure and definitely destined to make mincemeat of fickle hearts all over the web. It is good and shiny like an overviewed but freshly refiltered Instagram photo of a Hollywood sunset.

For all the razzle-dazzle of its surprise release, I’m struck by hard it is to draw a lasting overall impression from the record. It adds little to the reinvention established by Folklore and doesn’t deepen her work within this sound in particularly convincing terms. I want to credit her at least for keeping up an industrious streak, but this alone would seem patronising.

Unlike past efforts, however, Ti Amo is jarring for how glossy and smooth everything sounds.

It may be palatable and generally inoffensive on a whole, but Ghost on Ghost really goes down best when viewed as a supplement to other better, more transcendent material already out there.

It’s too harsh to suggest that the band are coasting, since there are once more fragments of ideas, concepts and melodies which arouse.

Apart from a precious few exceptions, none of the gathered musicians seem able nor willing to push each other into new musical territory that could yield fresh revelations about their union.

The inherent problems which bog Welcome Home down largely stem from superficial writing. This is nothing new for the band, but for a record centring itself around Vinnie, the lyrics feel like they’re skirting around the topic in a humdrum manner in favour of really getting into the nitty-gritty of it all.

Even at 45 minutes, Education, Education, Education & War feels too long, because the Chiefs are 100% committed to impose their sarcastic views till the last second.

Baptize is as much a trip through modern day Atreyu cliché as it highlights the best of the group’s more...aged cuts.

It is without a plan and without much of an aim, save for vague touchstones in ‘80s pop and new wave, a path tread much more smoothly by Casablancas’ prior solo work.