There’s an element of the ridiculous in this. But there’s also a charm to their guileless, retro-fetishist conviction. And dudes have chops.

The Anteroom sometimes creeps and lurches like an old car stuck in rush-hour traffic.

If the arrangements sometimes sound automated, Mai is adept enough as a singer to enliven them.

It ultimately sounds like a radio stuck between two stations, a bit like the Hold Steady with laryngitis. Luckily there are enough musical diversions to keep it interesting.

Logic rhymes in exciting ways, but the meanings can be a little strained.

Kennedy and the Conspirators have made three previous records with him, so it feels like a band, but there’s something about it that lacks the bite of the music he’s made with GN’R. A lot of it has to do with the lyrics.

This music still tends to slip into the background, affable but never striking.

This is a missed opportunity--there aren’t many artists out there right now hurling out James Brown-like screams over dissonant, programmed beats--and it’s indicative of the overall timidity at work on Young Sick Camellia.

What makes Raise Vibration more than just Professor Kravitz orating about the world’s ills is how he never forsakes catchy melodies for seriousness. His language is cutting (“It’s enough, and we all are just getting fucked” he sings on the latter track) but he presents it in a sweet, catchy way that’s easy to digest.

MNEK is a strong singer capable of bracing jumps into his falsetto register. But he seems to have been so immersed in writing for others that he’s lost his own voice.

The coldness of the instrumentals is compounded by the duo’s vocal delivery.

At its best, In the Blue Light amounts to a dream set list for devoted PaulHeads who wish he’d do entire shows of rarities and not bother with oft-played hits like “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Graceland” and “Late in the Evening.”

Ultimately, Kamikaze’s length and curtailed guest list make it less grueling than Revival, but Eminem’s indignant grandstanding has no discernible relation to the rap world he complains about.

Big Red Machine sounds like Bon Iver and The National freestyling with friends, drinks and vape pens.

“Mountain Child” is a catchy ode to trying to get in touch with your inner enfant sauvage, and the album’s closing confession, “It Probably Matters” is a poppy, jazzy number on which Banks reconciles his shitty attitude toward faithfulness, inner anger and his own lack of grace. He even sings a bit more on the latter cut. Unfortunately these moments come late on Maurader after so many lesser clones of the same old tricks.

Rainier Fog, though, feels as though it’s stuck between gears. As usual, there are Cantrell’s gargantuan, 10-ton metal riffs and lyrics like “I’ll stay here and feed my pet black hole,” on the especially dreary “Drone,” but they linger too long in that zone.

BEASTMODE 2 sounds like a Dirty South mixtape, and you can virtually imagine the duo grinding in an Atlanta studio somewhere at 4 a.m. after the strip clubs have closed. But like so many mixtapes from trap’s golden era, all the songs tend to run together into an amiably hardscrabble blur.

The LP is a heartfelt statement of resilience and determination that finds the singer refocusing his feel-good anthems towards heavier and heartier material. The only question is whether or not Chesney’s latest marks a reactive glimpse of inspiration or an entirely new way forward.

The more visceral appeal of Coming Apart--most notably Gordon’s vocals--is lost somewhat in this pivot to patient squall and ugly voids (the 10-minute “Change My Brain” sounds like she’s crooning to an industrial fan), but the duo are still exceptional at manipulating scuzz.

For Lamp Lit Prose, Longstreth melds both strategies in a flood of ideas and magnificent vocal arrangements. The results are by turns dazzling and exhausting. Partly it’s is an issue of balance.

Gunn himself has a sharp, high-pitched voice and breaks verses down into micro-fragments; he’s not as lyrically deft as some of his thug rap peers, but he’s punchy and effective.

Cackling, croaking, and cracking up through vocal processors, he sounds like he’s having a blast. And you will too, even if you don’t remember any of it by morning--which also seems perfectly in the spirit of thin

The most visceral tune may be the agoraphobia slam of "Black Paint," but the most interesting development is album's closer "Disappointed," which sounds like the hocketing of Dirty Projectors interpreted by a hardcore band.

It's all piss and vinegar and posturing.

Singing, rapping and spoken-word float through these tracks, as do soulful improvs from Adjuah, Glasper and others, but what lingers is the overall aura: a no-seams-showing blend of jazz, R&B and hip-hop, with a spontaneous "3 a.m. in the studio" feel.

A sprawling, eclectic set that ranges from the slightly tepid to the truly transcendent.

Nasir is among the weakest Nas albums, but there’s nothing spectacular about its failure. It is, simply, the one thing Nas has avoided being all these years, through revolutionary highs and car-crash lows: dull.

That's not to say there aren't glorious passages on Head Over Heels. Listen to the long, climbing curve in the second round of backing vocals during the chorus of "Right Back Home to You;" the shimmering, too-brief melodic interlude in "Count Me Out," which is so rich it could serve as the basis for another song entirely; or the groove on "Slumming It," which is an impeccable riff on Chemise's "She Can't Love You." But these moments are fleeting, and there aren't enough of them to make you fall head over heels for this album.