That consistent album we're waiting for still hasn't come just yet.

Swallow the Sun should have released this as three separate albums. The connection between the three pieces is frail, and given the relative lack of direction this is not a surprise. The album’s strengths are numerous, yet scattered, and its weaknesses are unfortunately a lot more concentrated.

A mixed bag that gathers the good, the average, and the bad. A melange of familiar echoes which, while not a symphony of destruction, still do enough damage to keep the brand alive and kicking.

Picture Perfect's silver lining comes in that it is, at the end of the day, a perfectly serviceable pop record replete with euphoric headrushes and the occasional tenacious earworm ("Impossible").

Yet even Campbell can’t save Desire Lines from coming off as creatively stagnant, just as pretty as ever but overwhelmingly pedestrian.

Odd Blood delivers a series of earworms that are undeniably catchy but leave a legitimate question in their wake: why should we care? Yeasayer ultimately fails to answer this question, and Odd Blood sort of just runs its course unimpressively.

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.

Bloom has continued making Beach House a Thing in indie music, a band that has a feasible future, that won't be just forgotten and left by the wayside. It's nothing to get excited about.

Even with the missteps and occasional ennui, Terrestrials is a welcome merger between two insuppressible forces in the industry today, which should leave us all curious about what their next cloak-and-dagger collaboration will sound like.

For better or for worse--you'll like it because of the music it reminds you of, but you won't love it for exactly the same reason.

All these songs just sound too much like Gorillaz songs, in an uncomfortable, self-conscious way.

It's so smooth, this record, that it's sometimes too smooth, to the point to being slight.

Architects have made another harmless, inconsequential rock album that’s worth spinning once or twice for curiosity, as there are some decent – dare I say great – moments here.

Surprisingly, The Cool works as an album despite its many obvious flaws: the pop tracks are as good as anything from his debut, and his attempts to branch out are at least hit and miss, with exciting tracks like ‘Little Weapon’ and ‘Dumb It Down’ breaking the monotony of his soapbox moments.

The speed at which the songs are played sounds not only like they are stuck in the mud, but that the weight tethered to them is also dragging them backwards. The final result is an anemic, lackluster 52 minutes.

...So Unknown is a flawed record, but still a worthwhile one to check out. Underneath its misguided bells and whistles lies a grueling trench of hatred and rage, one that demonstrates Jesus Piece’s capability to pulverize their audience with a sort of backwards grace.

In general, 'Axe to Fall' speaks towards the stagnancy of most bands in the metal genre. The collaborators here can't even help a band as good as Converge make a solid record and when examining Converge's almost flawless discography that is wholly unexplainable.

Signed and Sealed in Blood is a pleasant addition to the Dropkick Murphys' discography, but the reliance on their trustworthy, time-tested conservatism is somewhat unfulfilling here.

The end result is a tepid, lifeless album devoid of everything that we've come to expect from them in this part of their career, leaving only the most traditional aspects of their sound intact.

It's not that it's post-rock-by-numbers, although at times it really is, but more so that it doesn't even sound like there are painters behind the palette.

Even though it can be repetitive at times, it still possesses enough standout moments to keep it from fading into oblivion.

As it stands for now though, Red is a mixed bag, and it's up to you to sort through the majority-holding bad in order to find the good.

Too bad it doesn’t come together better as it merely buckles down into a messy heap of proggy tomfoolery.

This bare regurgitation of conflicting sounds is what hurts The Above the most, presenting as a (not so) greatest hits compilation from purgatory. It feels cobbled together, without care for global coherence nor the refined execution of any one sound, instead counting on the excitement of variety and disjunction to make up for its less considered, less interesting content.

Ultra Beatdown features the same guitar riffing, theatric singing and the rest of that stuff that doesn’t matter in regards to Dragonforce.

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.

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.

Though I can't say this album has as many of these killer tracks as Xiu Xiu's previous albums, Women as Lovers is a satisfying installment for fans of Xiu Xiu's singular style.

Tomboy doesn't speak loud enough for us to hear it. It hums, rather; it mumbles. It actually can't speak.

It's a take it or leave it sort of deal and though I presume that is exactly how it's going to be received among most listeners, there's a fan base here for any romantic fuzz-nerd with a sweet tooth, which considering the success of the inferior Dum Dum and Vivian Girls (of which one plays in Best Coast's live band (with all due respect)) is quite an audience indeed.

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.

Basically, Oversteps is solid to chill to. But don't expect to be entertained/enthralled in the slightest.

It’s smart at points, silly at others, often musically unremarkable, occasionally pure pop gold and easily listenable without providing significant satisfaction for more than ten to fifteen minutes after the act of consumption.

Dream On is missing something, and as long as Boman continues to trudge the path of minimalism (that almost borders on indifference), her music will struggle to differentiate itself from the thousands of other indie-pop/folk songstresses out there who all write and sing about heartache in a similar way.

There are times when the idea of experimentation can become too much to bear.

The Hawk Is Howling is just an ambiguous mixture of the band's past.

It doesn't help that the music in general is so stubbornly tepid. Sure, overall it's a step up from The Black Market, but there's nothing here that gives the hope of Rise Against vaguely recalling what they used to be good at.

It's a shame that the album fails to hit, and in some ways, it's also a shame that it's not terrible, either.

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

Aside from its occasional highlights, Crisis of Faith feels haggard, tired and lost: branching in a handful of uninteresting, jarring directions with little apparent rhyme or reason.

In trying for everything, they’ve highlighted the disjointedness of the end product, turning a fully-fledged transformation into an erratic collection of middling-to-great Belle & Sebastian songs.

A distinct spirit? Always. Forging new ground? Only in the minds of marketing execs.

The Tortured Poets Department is too pulseless to inspire anything at all – and so when Swift does lay down the occasional track with colour in her cheeks, the results tend to tower over the rest of the album regardless of any visible issues they bear. Practically every one of the its greatest highlights is a glaring case-in-point for one or another of its recurrent flaws, yet transcends them through sheer pep and conviction.

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.

In the end, what you’re left with is a generic rock album with a couple of noteworthy moments and an aftertaste that will probably alienate a few long-time fans of the band.

Not much is worth listening to here; the record's second half saves the abysmal first, yet never approaches the greatness they're capable of.

The music itself isn't really the issue. It's the conceit, the fact that even though Kanye and Jay-Z truthfully are nailing what pop can sound like, they use their royal stature not to communicate fresh ideas but pander to their subjects because they f*cking can.

They’ve crafted a record that feels more like imitation than originality.

There isn’t enough content in Mudboy to make it much other than a vibe. There are traces of A$AP Ferg, Waka Flocka Flame, and OG Maco locked beneath its consistently muddy sound. But there isn’t enough nuance or ‘moments’ to make it worth repeated listens (like Sheck’s mentor, Travis Scott).

On the whole, The Odd Couple has a much more unified atmosphere, but in quality the album is sporadic and unpredictable.

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.

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.

Overinflated and squealing: it is not more than the sum of its parts. One hundred thousand good ideas, it turns out, are not enough to make an album.

The Weakerthans are still writing pretty, tender music, but they seem to have lost their immediacy and potency.

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

This unconventional marriage winds up being one that's most conventional, with the traffic of conversation decidedly one way.

Meandering, extremely derivative 2000's metal.

There's No Leaving Now was almost as good as The Wild Hunt--and now I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream. is almost as good as There's No Leaving Now. It’s diminishing returns on the same approach, and with this album we’ll definitely find ourselves satisfied yet again--only with another layer of appreciation eroded.

The standout tracks are strong enough to carry the album, which means that it will probably resonate with listeners who don’t mind putting up with lengthy passages of fluff in between those moments of grandeur.

Smile does have it's special moments, but the problem is that they never amount to anything better than the star parts on their previous efforts.

If Turner can return to his best--and there's reason to suspect he can't--then the possibilities open to them are potentially limitless. Then, Humbug will be seen a stepping stone. That's certainly how it feels now.

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.

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.

At the end of the day, the title Write About Love turned out to be just as bland as the music it pertained to.

A lot of tracks start off OK, but his flow and style are so unfocused and muddled the songs become a chore to sit through.

At times The Physical World feels like the real deal, at others a pale imitation of a too-distinct aesthetic.

For its faults, Gallipoli is nice. It’s pleasant. But it’s the type of nice that makes you wonder if there was any substance there at all.

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.

Immolate Yourself is a finely produced record, and still features a good chunk of material worth listening to, even if it doesn't exactly stack up with the duo's previous efforts.

It's an important album for Scuba, as a means of transition, of mastering his new craft. It's just not a terribly important album for the rest of us.

All in all, not the death knell that it could have been but not the triumphant return it so could have been at the same time, Descension is another addition to the Coheed saga.

Whatever they ought to be doing is lost in mess of lame ideas buoyed by big hooks and pop flourishes.

For the most part Hats Off To The Buskers is second-tier British post-punk.

While it still sounds fresh it's still wearing the same threads, still talking in the same voice and moving in exactly the same way.

Almost every song is terribly alike--each featuring the same hallmarks Nadja’s become known for, besides their most important aspect, being their relentless creativity--and this bland similarity becomes taxing.

The Future Bites traverses a strange course ripe with rewarding avenues and detours of failed attempts alike. It’s nothing if not fascinating, and will perhaps be more rewarding to those with a high tolerance for unorthodox marriage of various elements influenced by Prince, 1980s pop, modern electronic music, and alternative rock.

Common's latest shows him with his head in the clouds and addressing the same tired crowd with the same speech he's been writing for years.

Wonky is a work full of many flaws and too few shining moments, but as ammunition for the obvious tours to follow, there's enough here to be effective enough in a large enough setting.

Harper sounds hardly inspired even in a city like Paris, and his homage to past artists sounds like cheap imitation more than anything.

Polaris is well-produced (even if the bass is dialed in several clicks too high), decently written, and properly executed for what it is. Critically speaking, however, it takes few musical risks and fails to launch any sort of vocal or instrumental melody, relegating it to a position as the sort of album you could take or leave in an artist's discography.

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

The high points of Pop Negro are where Diaz-Reixa is at his most celebratory and unrestrained and moments like the vocal hooks in "Ghetto Facil" and the stop-start pounding of "FM Tan Sexy" prove it. Unfortunately, the exuberance that bursts out of the clutter of his best songs is a characteristic seen too rarely here.

The pacing of the album is a little more sluggish than normal. It’s clear it was a conscious effort to savour this intergalactic soundscape and add more detail, but it’s aftereffects certainly carry over excess baggage. It’s not a bad album by any means and if you like his work, this will deliver in all the ways you’d expect, but in that regard that’s half the problem.

Musically, this is a very good record, one that might have been worth as much as a 4.5 with a different vocalist.

Greenwood has pretty much stacked the chips up against himself by deciding to get involved in this album in the first place. There's no need for him to be seen as a competitor to any canonical composer at this point in his career, but by putting his works side-by-side with Penderecki's, he inadvertently puts himself in that light, and it leaves us with an album that tells us very little about his work that isn't obvious to anybody who knows how long he's been composing (young composer still learning his trade--gasp!), and nothing about Penderecki that we haven't already known for over forty years.

The robust rock songs fall flat, rarely achieving lift off from their rote, chugging origins, while even the band’s worst proggish impulses are neatly trimmed down into manageable four-minutes-and-under transitions and slapped with a typically Trail of Dead-ian name, a middle finger in disguise. Only closer “Sound Of The Silk” really marries the two histories of the band into the kind of complete performance that made Tao of the Dead such a thrilling ride.

Gutter Tactics flow and overall rhymes pale in comparison to those found in "Abandoned Language." It is as if Gutter Tactics thick, doom sound that defined Dälek’s approach has now turned back and smothered any attempt at a unique change.

It's safe to say that Darkest Hour are not as good as they used to be--sorry, fans, but The Eternal Return and The Human Romance are both indicators of that. But the band have certainly got their bearings back this year and have made the best album that they possibly could have without Kris Norris.

These moments of stepping outside of the indie pop comfort zone are what give Mountaintops a bit of zest, but it's also what makes the album less than a stellar affair.

This remains, however, a good album, and another triumph for Stuart Murdoch.

There you have it; young lads just starting out make poor-to-average debut record. Not an unusual occurrence, and no doubt a thousand other albums released that day were no better or worse than 180.

This may well be the group’s most sonically diverse outing yet, for good and for ill; even on the many occasions it isn’t convincing, it often manages enough novelty to entertain nonetheless, and Nigel Godrich's impeccable production job certainly makes the whole affair easy on the ears.

J. Cole’s raps, but KOD sounds like someone who is either unfamiliar with drug abuse, or is completely unsympathetic to the dynamics of drug abuse in America.

Days of Being Wild won’t ensnare your senses or make a concerted effort to win you over, which is okay. All you can do is just embrace it, listen to it, and hope that it grows on you.

It's a righting of the ship back to the quality control we've come to expect from the Raveonettes but nevertheless still an accomplished retread of a formula, nothing more.

Despite the similarities, there’s actually a few brief moments in The Floodlight Collective where Pundt one-ups the band he derivates from, but there’s unfortunately as many that are boring enough to negate any previous triumph.

Riceboy Sleeps isn't quite awful; on the contrary, there is enough warmth and prettiness to give the record some value. But by the same token, it's certainly not fantastic either, and therein lies the great problem with the whole project.

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.