It’s just a shame that what lies behind dozens of layers of metaphorical shrouds, isn’t a bit more poetic and interesting.

Unfortunately, Everybody Knows is the sound of two classic artists playing the 18th hole of their intertwined and decorated careers.

he vocals are gorgeous and Carlos plays with restraint and taste throughout. Unfortunately, such moments of inspiration are rare, as most of the songs reflect a project that struggles to find a place to stand.

The first nine tracks of the record, referred to as Death, are solid, listenable, weirdo rock that fans, or anyone who appreciates creative music could enjoy. ... Two minutes into “Cradboa Negro,” the last track of the Death portion of the record, it all starts going south. The subsequent 14 tracks of Love, aside from some funny song titles like “Chicken Butt” and “The Asshole Bastard,” are utter baloney.

For being one of the first big punk albums in post-Trump America, Wolves doesn’t howl nearly enough and rarely shows its fangs.

For a 14-track album that feels interminably long at only 44 minutes, three songs is not enough to save L.A. Divine from sustained mediocrity.

It’s an occasionally comical throwback to when they were at their biggest, with a few good-not-great moments. One can only hope they chill out and come up with something better in a few years.

Dirty Projectors, his self-titled rebirth, is therapeutic and at times frustratingly insular, full of dazzling and meticulous electronic textures that bely the melancholia underneath.

The band’s latest is a slight improvement, though the self-indulgence and lack of focus are still in evidence.

Electronic music edges ever so slowly toward nausea, a tendency to turn music into math. The best artists fight this with loving restraint. Bayonne is close to the mark, but there might be a few times when you reach for the volume and just say “enough” with the looping. Then there are times when it does work, as on the song “Spectrolite” with a heavier emphasis on analog instruments.

AlunaGeorge have always been smooth, but here they sound soft, the glitches debugged, their quirks edited out.

AIM isn’t nearly as ambitious. It’s just busywork, M.I.A. watching the clock, scanning the news, occupied, but idle.

Alongside its distracting flaws, True Sadness contains some truly beautiful music--and a good measure of the joyous energy that The Avett Brothers employ to transcendent effect live--but there’s no guiding principle here, resulting in a dizzy mess of an album that doesn’t live up to the band’s talents.

While intimate and personal in nature, Piano combines minimalistic instrumentation with simplistic lyrics and makes for an album that turns lackluster as a whole.

There’s some beautiful string parts, synth that rolls off sullenly into a distant horizon, and a pretty mean glockenspiel on “For You Always,” but the vocals ruin it. They don’t fit at all. It makes the album hard to swallow in the end, like an amazing deep dish pizza covered in green onions.

It sounds a bit like you took Captain and Tennille (or at least Captain) and down-sampled their music, ran the vocals through a pipe organ, and then shot one of their hits (say, “Muskrat Love” or “Love Will Keep Us Together”) full of amphetamines.

Chaosmosis, though full of small pleasures, will undoubtedly go down as a minor work in the Scream discography. Primal Scream’s best records dissolved genres together like potions; Chaosmosis seems happy just to ride out the groove.

Painting With is a record that just “is,” not very noteworthy, the band nowhere close to fulfilling its potential.

All in all, Sunflower Bean stripped away more than was necessary. The blunt truth is that the refreshing and energizing band that birthed “Tame Impala” and “Rock & Roll Heathen” just didn’t show up to the Human Ceremony recording sessions.

There are glimpses of vitality on Hymns, but The Spirit is flaky.

Curve of the Earth isn’t a complete rebound--there are too many fumbles, too many eye-rolls. But in its fits of brilliance, Mystery Jets reclaim their throne as rock’s savviest copycats.

In spite of its melodic clarity, Drones ultimately succumbs under the weight of its narrative, which strains for political and social commentary but winds up closer to parody.

There’s no deviating from this formula as 1000 Palms is a disappointingly reclusive step for a band whose once-bright star might have finally stopped flickering.

The Pinkprint has moments. Some are great, but most are not.

Taiga is an attempt at putting what it is that’s personal--vocals and lyrics--in the forefront, which is important, but it’s banished a mood and kind of mystery from everything.

Tyranny plays out like an album-length version of that epic song, stumbling upon moments of success in the way that a drunk dart player hits a bullseye every once in a while.

For an album that focuses on the theme of love, it’s really hard to find anything to swoon over on I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss.

He set out to depict the pains of contemporary Chicago, but he ended up just making another Common album.