At its best, Blade of Love is nicely adventurous and somewhat relentless. However, where Palace of Wind left listeners with an active role of relation and interpretation, Battle Trance comes off as a little overbearing this time around.

The Clearing is nothing if not the sound of a band discovering a new home, musically, emotionally, and physically. The sound is far bigger than either of the previous fingerpicking-heavy records.

Unfortunately, instead of rebuilding a sound structure (double meaning intended) with those scattered shards that Deerhoof has violently shaved off over its career, with La Isla Bonita, they’ve traced a nominal new work from a picture that never existed in such an ostensibly neatly composed way. Without that compositional tension hanging in its margins though, La Isla Bonita’s expressions, however inciting, remain just out of grasping reach, like an island mirage.

The songs here are mindless, repetitive, and perfect for the dance floor.

Cruel Summer is half a classic and half a concession to mediocre talents.

His music’s dynamic, but his voice lacks range and variety. Krug sings emotionally, but not responsively.

"Eighth Avenue" starts us off with a case study in mid-aughts indie pop: nylon thrumming, snare-led rhythm, spare buoyant bass.... Feels orchestrated but spontaneous, massive but twee.

Longer listeners will be impressed with the band’s evolution but will inevitably be let down with the lack of charm in these new recordings as opposed to their looser demo cuts.

If Bones is too densely packed to inspire, at least that’s a good quality for a foundation to have.

Truth is, there’s nothing too striking on The BBC Sessions, save for the closing four tracks.

It might be helpful to think of Blood Bank not as an EP but as a single with a solid new A-side and three largely irrelevant B-sides.

Dope Body albums have been great in the past because they took familiar kinds of rock melody and put a sinister spin on them, reimagining American popular rock through a spit-smeared lens, reinvigorating it with the edge and causticity those songs could have conveyed in different hands. But they don’t do any of that here. On Kunk, they just screw around a bit.

Aloha sound more like Genesis than ever.

Maybe it's the squeaky-cleanness of the sound and singing both that keeps me at a distance; a band like Okkervil River, both sonically and thematically similar to Vanderslice, succeed partially because they don't mind screaming and getting clumsy.

Until the Quiet Comes isn't bad, exactly. It's just definitely not good either.

Despite its misfires, Tongues does make for an intriguing listen, and the record is punctuated with the occasional highlight.

Mike Patton's The Solitude of Prime Numbers stands for the most part as a collection of missed opportunities, which ironically is its triumph.

While Menomena’s sound has matured and their musical prowess has grown considerably, similarities between songs of old and new are unmistakable.

Most will find this album unnecessary, even if it's not entirely inconsequential.

Essentially, Haines' piano playing and singing are lovely, but Knives' timidity, coupled with mundane and occasionally outright bad lyrics, keep this record in check.

The Big Dream is but a pretty stone that withers the moment it is touched, lifted for further inspection.

Things just go from mad galloping gobbledigook to spongy sentiment.

Land and Fixed suffers from a dearth of arresting moments, and the songs that do stand out typically only do so by directly aping well-worn standards.

On Iradelphic, Clark makes a sizable sonic departure from this tried-and-true brand, accelerating his recent investigations into vocal song structures and exploring rudimentary acoustic guitar textures, with mixed results.

Unlike the greatest movements of his previous albums, Wings of Love’s diversity is its greatest fault, as 14 tracks visit musical fads long forgotten and ill conceived.

Tragicomedies isn't terrible, but its significance hinges on two established and already surpassed mediums.

Despite having moments that tip it toward being his most “challenging” album lyrically (if being challenging has anything to do with being serious), This Old Dog might be his least interesting instrumentally and musically.

For every song that I replay, there’s another that I skip.