Wake Up the Nation rocks with abandon, to be sure. What it needs is cohesion.

Tracks like “Death Came,” “Dust,” and “Bitter Memory” have great lyrics, yet the clear conclusion is that Williams should’ve condensed her second self-released double-disc set since 2014 into one record--two is just too much.

Nikki Nack is ear candy, crammed with shards of looped instruments poking their heads above ground like skittish gophers and odd, counterintuitive vocal rhythms.... Unfortunately, too many songs have so much sugar-rush action, like the judder and clack of “Find a New Way,” that they fly apart.

Could be that the breathlessly lauded TV on the Radio is operating on some encrypted frequency that's beyond mortal ears, but the Brooklyn, N.Y., head-trippers mostly sound asleep at the switch on their fifth album.

Expectations were high for this first joint record from the husband-and-wife team, but they generally settle for easy-listening, adult-contemporary blues music that rarely unleashes the power for which they are known.

After 10 songs, the digital version It's Blitz! is padded out with four acoustic renditions of songs on the album. But even with an acoustic guitar at the forefront and Karen O harmonizing with string sections and pianos, the songs--and, crucially, the melodies - still don't convey much.

With the thunderous blues-rock of “White Sky” (where his voice takes on gospel fervor), the glam momentum of “Long Time,” and the watery vibe of “These City Streets,” he remains defiantly all over the map.

It is the Montreal rockers’ most hit-or-miss effort, at once arresting for its audacity and kaleidoscopic swirl of influences but often exhausting with songs that buckle under their own weight.

“When You Are Young,” “Pale Snow,” and “Learning to Be” sound transitional even at full length, struggling for traction and momentum. “I Don’t Know How to Reach You” is grand and gloriously dramatic, propulsive, and vaguely off in the best Suede tradition, guitarist Richard Oakes pinging in sad ecstasy in tandem with singer Brett Anderson’s preening, come-hither mope.

On “Jackal,” O’Brien’s digressive songwriting was held together by a unifying palette. Here, he’s all over the place.

"I'll Sleep" isn't supposed to be easy listening, but it shouldn't be this hard, either.

Ultimately, "Broken Arm" is more about indulging a massively skewed sonic perspective than a collection of songs.

There's a pervasive sameness throughout, so even highlights like the title track suffer from diminishing returns.

Too often bloat tempers the brilliance.

More than any of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s past classics, “Colorado” recalls Young’s last album, 2017’s “The Visitor.” Like that record, “Colorado” is a politically charged, uneven release that at its best comes close enough to recapturing Young’s past glories to satisfy his diehard fans. And if you don’t like it? Well, there’ll probably be another one next year.

Tribal, which too often plays it safe with its good-time gumbo of funk, blues, jazz, and swamp rock. Courtesy of his band, the Lower 911, the musicianship is superb, but the songs aren't especially memorable, serving up political commentary in fortune-cookie philosophy.

An enticing invitation to the group's live performance, sure, but often no more.

Conatus is moody mermaid music.

Much of the album sounds like she's simply going through the motions, occasionally picking imagery seemingly just because it rhymes.

Ultimately, though, the album is weighed down by verbose lyrics and excess ambition.

Though her versatility is promising, Clark will be able to compete only when she figures out how to be one very interesting person, instead of five caricatures at once.

The manufactured atmosphere ultimately distances the listener. With a few exceptions, including the song “Blue Mountain,” the production also fails to find the best way to deploy Weir’s voice, holding it too far back in the mix.

Songcraft is a problem throughout the album’s 12 bloated tracks, but the fact that they’re long isn’t the issue--Marr can, and has, held our attention before. It’s more that they lack conviction and structure.

Further songs follow suit, rarely deviating from verse-chorus-verse-chorus rigor. The upbeat “Sunday Love” breaks that mold with its rhythmically catchy verse and earworm chorus, which almost hides the fact that the song--about the would-be bride seeing a girl everywhere she goes--repeats the album’s most common problem: It’s unclear just what the song is about, and how it relates to the core concept.

It flat-out confounds.

Thompson's playing is as fierce as ever, and his band (which includes multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn) are tight and focused in this setting. Too bad, then, that the songs feel more like Thompson treading water, snipping bits and pieces of past favorites--a guitar solo here, a vocal sneer there--into new songs that lack personality.

"Volta," much like "Medulla," is an appealing series of collaborations and musical ideas that do not quite jell in their final, recorded versions.

The album finds Weller throwing sounds against the wall and seeing what sticks. Unfortunately, not much does.

Burnett is generally unable to deliver the magic he brought to Alison Krauss, among others.

While Go occasionally possesses the scope of IMAX (and Sigur Ros), it never develops the depth or grandeur.

No question this is meant to be a haunting mood piece, and her gorgeous voice--somewhere between Björk and Tori Amos, to name the obvious referents--makes up in some part for what's lacking in dynamics and compelling hooks.

The ballads that dominate the disc's second half give her too much room to savor her elongated vowels and gulped consonants, contorting the words so much their meaning becomes indistinct.

Lloyd shows little nuance, and Polow Da Don doesn't color in the tracks with enough interesting musical flourishes to mask some of the vocalist's weaknesses.

She has always been a skilled composer, but while there are some great songs on Masts of Manhatta, it's not a great album.

Its title notwithstanding, To Survive is JAPW's happy-in-love album, and the lack of tension--romantic, musical, or otherwise--causes it to drag.

The music is a bright, shiny, and bland pastiche of electronic pop and faint nods to new wave and R&B. And the songwriting feels generic, a departure from the personable details that have made her a unique voice.

Too many bleak ballads about lost love and runaways bring down the fun.

It works better in theory than in practice.

Clearly influenced by Brian Eno (who appears on two tracks), it is an ambient snoozefest marred by listless mood pieces.

Her personality doesn't surface--and neither does a groove--until midway through the disc, on a bluesy trio of tunes: 'Breakfast in Bed,' 'Willie and Laura Mae Jones,' and 'I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore.'

Grass Punks essentially consists of scaffolding for material to come later, which may be why Brosseau keeps the proceedings under a brisk half hour. Simplicity can be a virtue, but it’s not enough on its own.

Sucker is better when Charli has a bite.

Expo 86 is ultimately too dense for its own good, with interesting things happening on a surface that's so difficult to pierce that there's eventually little urgency to keep trying.

There are some great things here, but not likely enough for Strait to win another Grammy for best country album, which he did last year.

Anthems are plenty on "Infinity on High," and odds are good the fans are so well versed in bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz's pun-saturated, self-referential verbiage that they'll simply surrender -- as they should -- to the familiar burly riffs and candied hooks.

It is by far the strangest record he's ever made: a willfully sullen and uncompromising electro-pop album from one of hip-hop's biggest stars.

While there's a certain bubblegum synth-pop allure and cheeky lyrical irony in songs like 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again),' it's hard to find ourselves being carried away on youthful pluck and preciousness alone.

Grand statements about humanity in “Savages” and “Immortal” fall flat, and moments like the three-syllable “di-a-mond” in “Solitaire” mistake quirk for personality. But a few slices of FROOT are exactly ripe enough.

Harlem's A$AP Rocky finally delivers his long delayed major label debut, and while it builds on his mixtape legacy and emphasizes his strengths as an inventive stylist, it also amplifies his flaws.

The groupthink does drain some of the individuality and soul from the process.

Some of the 25-year-old artist’s songs here seem unrealized, his slim insights into relationships not as revealing as his often eloquent guitar work. Self-reflection turns to self-absorption, and never quite resonates on a universal level.

Dazzling moments don't come often enough to make up for flat ones.

The few gold nuggets too easily get lost among the many chunks of lead.

Without any sense of grounding, the record seems like an inconsequential fantasy.

If this intermittently pleasant but insignificant album has a purpose, it's to prove that the 74-year-old country legend can still do it like clockwork.

Mostly this parade of midtempo guitar-plus-keys tracks comes off as inert and paint-by-numbers.

The Whigs seem only capable of reclaiming their turf in fits and starts.

Reverence, or at least too much of it, is often the death knell for tribute albums. If a legend's legacy looms too large, artists err on the side of homage instead of interpretation. That's the obvious problem with this salute to country icon Loretta Lynn, which cherry-picks from her 50-year career with an emphasis on songs she either wrote or co-wrote.

Adhering to basic rock formalism, the all-women quartet captures a raw primitivism that’s undeniably appealing in an era when most mainstream rock acts are as manicured as Bravo housewives. Unfortunately, too many songs like “I’ll Be Your Man,” a sleepy (hungover?) stab at hooky, sunshine rock, seem like first drafts.

Almost every song has a mournful tone, and too many sound alike: slow, ponderous ballads steeped in negativity.

Conscious may be polished to a high gloss, but it lacks the personality and emotion that made Broods’ debut such a shadowy revelation.

The middle of the album is a problem, especially the Hiatus Kaiyote number, “Little Church,” a strange, bloodless clunker that drags down the Mvula (“Silence Is the Way”) and KING (“Song for Selim”) features that follow. The Badu track, the electro-bossa nova “Maiysha (So Long),” is fine but familiar. Miles Davis concept aside, Glasper’s still in “Black Radio” mode. It works, but it needs a little dirt, and probably a new challenge.

It’s the first Eisley album that fails to improve on its predecessor, recapitulating earlier ideas while seemingly in retreat.

How much Gorillaz fans enjoy The Now Now will depend on why they became fans in the first place. Anyone captivated by Hewlett’s world-building will probably feel a little let down, as will those who fell for their eclectic, big-tent approach to pop. That leaves the Damon Albarn diehards.

Too many tracks flirt with flat inconsequentiality, and too often the lyrics slip by without the sting of Mann's normally incisive wordsmithery.

It’s a hard album to dislike, and an equally hard one to love.

"Snakes & Arrows" is several steps ahead of more recent efforts.

If as much heart and group energy went into the rest of the tracks, Diagrams might have been the electrifying re-entrance of the Wu-Tang Clan that fans were hoping for instead of just the minor miracle it is.

These new songs are so amiable that you wonder where they’re meant to take you. Often the breezy journey--while pleasant enough--leads to dead ends.

It’s a fanciful and deftly assembled showcase of textures and moods, lovely and capricious. Taken alone, however, the music made this listener pine for a fistful of Stevens’s evocative melodies and commanding lyrics to anchor the ornamentation.

There’s an identity crisis in the way the band veers radically from hard-edged rock to slick, superficial pop. There are too many lyrical cliches.

Kidsticks swings back toward electronica; the problem is that it’s poorly done. It’s the first time she’s written on synthesizers, not guitars, and frankly it’s a mess.

The new effort often feels forced and rushed, with an overdose of stylized ’50s jargon.

Save for the playfully tempestuous “Th’Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame (Sonnet 129),” they’re serviceable and, like the spoken-word reprises by the likes of William Shatner and Siân Phillips, take few risks.

The best tunes are the first and last in “Weight of Love” (where Auerbach unleashes a two-minute guitar solo of vintage psychedelia) and the Stones-like punch of “Gotta Get Away.” Otherwise, most songs merely drift away.

It's an ornate, dizzying affair, where all his interests and talents collide in one brazen gesture. It's impressive in scope, but where does that leave the listener? Possibly with a headache.

It is a sonically adventurous album, with the E Street Band again accompanying him. But the songwriting far too often feels like an afterthought, canned and jarringly shallow.

Keyshia Cole's street edge sets her apart from her polished R&B peers, but the Oakland, Calif., songstress could have used a good editor on her second album, which is bogged down by too many ballads and overly lush production.

If you’re a total Chilton completist, you might want this album, but it’s not for everyone.

The results are mixed. Half of I Still Do falls into the easy-listening, cruise-control blues of Clapton’s later career, a long way from his fiery days with Cream and Derek and the Dominos.

Twice, he wisely enlists Jhene Aiko, who has become rap’s signifier for bruised emotions. Yet the conflicted despondency throughout (“I Know,” “Win Some, Lose Some”) never yields to enlightenment; the results are more murky than dark.

In time, Boxes likely will be seen as belonging to Radiohead’s business-side innovations more than to its musical ones. It’s enjoyable yet slight, a hedged bet on a still-unproven concept.

It's still a decent album, but it's also an opportunity lost.

Carlton's wheels are finally spinning forward, but they don't gain much traction.

Since her 2004 smash, “Goodies,” Ciara has had trouble finding the right commercial song and it appears she’s still searching.

The singer works with hit-makers The-Dream and Tricky Stewart on several tracks; unfortunately, it seems they've saved their best hooks for their next gig.

Not exactly different enough to make this the Hives's "White Album," but for once, things aren't literally so black and white.

For an artist whose reputation for painstaking perfectionism and poetic acumen is legendary, Little Honey is too much saccharine and not enough substance.

This isn't quite sensitive arena balladry, and it's not quite a disco party, and that's emblematic of both this album's biggest problem and its greatest strength.

The music ranges from Beach Boys baroque-pop to the awkward hip-hop flow of “Thank God for Girls” when not reiterating rote (if pleasant) Weezer crunch-pop anthems.

Deer Tick lacks the discipline not to attack the latter like a barnburner, as well as to fill every inch of its 75-plus minutes like Wilco did.

The hodgepodge of instrumentals and lopsided melodies felt like they were working together toward a weird, wobbly, warm center on "Mare," but on Terra they ultimately prove more confusing than captivating.

Is this it? Don't feel ashamed if that's your initial reaction to the Strokes' new album, the natty New York rockers' first in five years. Stick with it, and you'll be rewarded with a record that's completely oblivious to expectations and past glories.

There’s a temptation to view Whatever, My Love as a companion piece to its lone predecessor, 1993’s “Become What You Are,” when really it’s just another Hatfield album. As such, it lives and dies by standard Hatfield calculus.

There’s a wealth of talent involved, no doubt, but Monica is capable of a more consistently satisfying effort.

There’s talent here, but it seems Wolf’s spent so much time devising a plan to smuggle abstraction over the pop barricades that he neglected to pack the payload.

After months of hype, teases, and a handful of singles, Lady Gaga's new album has arrived - and it's a letdown, the most deflated moment in pop music this year.

Despite the deluxe treatments, the tracks on Nausea tend to blend into a blur, and their richness sometimes seems at odds with Vallesteros’s maudlin charms. Fans of “Labor” may be left wondering if beige is really a step up from gray.