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.