Cool It Down, is less of a step forward, or in any meaningful direction, and more of a twirl in place. It’s a pleasant and polished listen, more palatable than its predecessor, with glimpses of the band’s top gear. But fans anticipating some return to the frenzy of “Tick,” “Man” or “Pin” will keep waiting.

Spheres does just what they need it to do: land two or three easily digestible mega-jams to punch up the next concert setlist. ... The rest is, well, the rest. Four of the 12 tracks are interludes or faceless dance instrumentals. ... There’s just very little anchoring these songs. No sense of purpose, cohesion or emotional reckoning.

Lorde’s least vital project by several leagues. There’s just very little magic here. The album lilts and meanders across 12 tracks, wholly avoiding the incendiary electronic percussion of past releases. ... Fewer drum machines would be fine if the tunes were particularly engaging, but the album’s general sense of self-satisfaction all but screams no pressure, friends, check this out when you get around to it. The lax style is no accident, of course. Lorde is a deft songwriter.

Van Weezer continues that trajectory with its hard-rock/metal ethos, but it seldom feels like anything beyond a novelty.

Positions is less captivating than Thank U, Next and Sweetener, both of which felt more complete and unskippable. But for an album no one knew was coming until two weeks ago, it’s more than adequate.

On Chromatica, she seems too afraid or to removed from the Koons-loving side of herself to get too bizarre or to let the production dominate, two of Artpop’s best qualities. ... Chromatica functions as both stopgap escapism and yet another portrait of someone among us who’s trying to patch together her identity again.

Green Day’s 13th studio album set sees them step outside of their comfort zone, experimenting with a range of new sounds and styles. However, this leads to mixed results.

Port of Miami 2 further cements Ross as a mainstay among the aging elite—those rappers whose names now carry them further than their music does. Playing it safe with the sequel to his far more ambitious debut LP, Ross regurgitates that which people have come to love from him, or at least have accepted as his standard.

They’re about the feeling--everything tween inside every grown adult, and thus they are still unmistakably Carly even as she tries on new sounds. When Dedication falters it’s in the latter half, where her producers seem to be trying to chase pop, or at least Spotify “airplay,” by making her sound like everyone else.

A mediocre album without the ambition to flirt with the terrible, Beauty Marks manages to land in the middle of Ciara’s discography when boldness is required.

The lyrics are certainly emotional, as he says, but there’s an immediacy to them that feels new for DeMarco, and it doesn’t always suit the music.

None of the songs on the Black Album are as garish, horrifying, or catchy as “Beverly Hills,” nor as totally committed to a one-dimensional concept as those of the White Album. By contrast, the Black Album sounds scattered, as if the comedy is beginning to lose definition.

On every track, the mad-libs are paired with stylistically diverse arrangements--and invariably plodding tempos. The album’s lone sugar spike is “Dumb Blonde,” a rehashed “Girlfriend” that features a phoned-in Nicki Minaj guest verse midway through and, for some reason, a pre-chorus melody yanked from Lipps, Inc.’s “Funky Town.” In spite of everything, Head Above Water offers one brief moment where Lavigne’s emotional alchemy assumes a bolder musical form that’s properly befitting of her powerhouse vocals and enduring authenticity: the opening stunner of a title track.

The relatively trim Buoys winds up feeling as minor as 2018’s A Day With the Homies EP, despite being twice as long and bearing far higher expectations.

On Delta, the scope of Mumford & Sons’ ambition is far wider than their abilities as songwriters. The result is an hour-long slog with only a few brief realizations of their old potential before the next crescendo hits.

The problem bedeviling the first new Chic album since 1992’s Chic-ism is one of definition: What does Chic mean in 2018? To Rodgers and his collaborators, it means a Daft Punk album whose processed vocals and acoustic elements collide to abrasive effect; it means a tighter Maroon 5 album. Yet Adam & the Levines are nowhere in sight, nor indeed any major star with the exception of Craig David, Elton John, and Lady Gaga, the latter intoning the lyrics of an unwise remake of 1979’s “I Want Your Love” as if she were Minnie Mouse imitating Grace Jones.

If the lyrics are getting all the attention on Digital Garbage, it’s only because the music is exactly what you’d expect. Mudhoney’s sound hasn’t changed much since the early ‘90s. ... Mudhoney are comfortable with themselves to a fault.

>>> succeeds about half the time, but too often the band sounds conflicted between marching forward as the old Beak> and committing to a new direction.

His skill is still intact, but his music lacks its former inspiration, and he only digs a deeper hole for himself by taking aim at the youth.

Except for standouts “Barbie Dreams,” “Good Form,” and “Chun-Li,” Queen is full of songs that Nicki has more or less done previously and in better ways. It’s not that Nicki has become a worse rapper (“Lara been Croft” jokes aside) or that the production is bad, it’s that everything here is only adequate--nothing pops, no chances are taken, and there isn’t any notable magic in these records.

Beaty and bouncy but less meaty, Palo Santo is for now an unsatisfying follow-up to a terrific debut.

Scorpion is stronger when Drake stops narrating the circumstances of his own life and simply writes more of the breezy, cocksure songs that seem to come so effortlessly to him.

Bad Witch, like its two predecessors, contains glints of exploration tempered by maturity and consistency. ... It’s a strangely tentative gesture from an artist who made his name as a longform auteur.

It all rings hollow due to how thinly sketched out the writing and production is. Much of it is awkward, directionless, and, at times, just confusing--showing an artist grasping at a million ideas and hoping to grab one, with none of it being done in any interesting or shrewd way.

For now, we’re stuck with a record that’s both intentionally and unintentionally frustrating: A record about self-loathing where the actual remorse is absent, where its creator would insist that’s the point.

In 2018, as it becomes more pressing than ever for artists to use their platforms to speak out, Love Is Dead pursues clarity, both in production and politics, with mixed results.

Rausch’s ambitious structure is an incomplete but laudable step forward. If Narkopop was a belated capstone on the first era of Gas, Rausch might be the first real statement of a coming second phase. And its status as second-tier Voigt doesn’t necessarily portend dire things to come.

By nature the album highlights their aesthetic differences, but at no point makes a strong argument for their separation. Still, it’s a bit of an awkward listen, with each of the three discs displaying obvious charms but none following through on its promise completely.