Synth pop album, also dance pop but mellower mixes. With some signature robotic sounds & synths, Sexisential's somewhat simpler club mixes shine a light on Robyn's more meditative messaging on sex. The album's fun, nice to bop to. The title track's lyrics are very explicit & crazy (doesn't work for me personally), the other tracks are fun but nothing outstanding. Fine listen, Sexistential works decent as a cohesive project.

Synth pop album, Australian TikToker's first LP. Synthy, poppy & fun ethereal mixes. Peach PRC has a pretty & soft voice and Porcelain is decently produced to shine a light on her vocals (love the supporting harmonies). Maybe expected from a first LP, Porcelain is safe to enjoy & not very adventurous. The writing is a bit cheesy, b-tracks are pretty dull & some parts are overdone. Not a super memorable project but if you like her voice, chuck on some of the first half.

Metalcore HEVY album. Blanketed me with disgusting screams, chugging, filthy bassline. As a package, it's a 37 minute mood setter for straight HEVY feels. Tracks are super similar to each other, but it's a decent heavy mood setter and you can't ask for more.

Metalcore album, KINDA HARD kinda teases heavier music tones here & there. Franck is still a great vocalist and sounds like he's having fun. The singles are still signature Bilmuri & riff-heavy (not as good as we've had), the b-sides are a bit more forgettable. It's unfair to compare it heavily to AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS (masterpiece), but KINDA HARD's a less consistent, more formulaic album - KINDA is 100% the album's theme and for a fan, that's kinda enough.

(kinda) Kpop album, my first BLACKPINK listen. Very sterile release, it's all soulless & westernized with no magic & 99% English lyrics. The Dr Luke (ew) tracks, they're bad & very poorly dated, they could clearly be sung by anyone - any artist that takes him on deserve what they get. Poor project.

New Zealand singer-songwriter album. Red Sunset is a very floaty project - softly whimsical, slight French pop lofi production, but not thought out well and ends up quite boring. Bic Runga goes for somewhat okay softly sung vocals but harmonies are serviceable at best. The non-descriptive lyrics don't have a lot going for them & are curiously very repetitive. Overall, bland enough to be a bit mentally taxing, either not a well thought album or too overthought.

Hip hop album. What a great album, Kendrick's fantastic, the production is well paced & super nice to listen to, easily an album to chuck on whenever. Kendrick's a confident storyteller, both in the tracks & narratively across the whole album, there's a ton of depth to this album in the lyricism, the production, the rapping. My personal preference, some parts aren't quite for me but after repeat listens, I can see this album as one that grows on me over time.

R&b pop soul album. Mars's first solo album in a bit, he's back with his signature charm & confidence. The Romantic is nice tracklist of romantic songs, with more slower paced cuts than his other work. Mars is obviously excellent & the instrumentation is gorgeous, but I'm whelmed by the album - it's the by-the-by Bruno Mars charm, very safe and not very adventurous. Mars' weakest project, but in this dead pop scene, safe Mars tracks are very welcome.

Pop rap album. XG's vocals are so clean & pretty, the rapping is generally pretty good. THE CORE is dazzling when its kpop adjacent production is energetic, charming & confident (GALA, HYPNOTIZE) with a healthy respect to its bassline. The rest of the album is either slower, generic or both (or outright bad like O.R.B.) pop rap/ pop tracks. This album is a coffee - when it peaks, THE CORE is on top of the world but when the crash comes, the rest is slow and sobering.

Hip hop album with trap. OCTANE gives you a lower energy, slower production album. Don Toliver is pretty smooth, belts in a few songs like Tiramisu. Accompanied by very solid beats, Toliver doesn't strike you with any particularly memorable moments of energy. It's a pretty steady tracklist, always giving you a minimum alright song but never anything outstanding. First third is pretty decent, the last two thirds are mellower & bloated, overall nothing to write about much.

Self-Titled is likely a divisive album - some will write off the formulaic r&b-infused metalcore sound, not realizing it was one of the first influences of the new scene. Others will glaze this as a classic album of 2010s while glossing over some messy song structures & mixing. Many will adore the vocals while also feel Tyler's looming dark cloud. I'll overall give it props for being a blueprint, it was mostly decent & I'm keen on trying Beautiful Oblivion.

Kpop album. Part.4 is another EP made for the concert go-ers - it's sung very well but it's not particularly deep. I like their darker production, Ghost was decent. Adrenaline reminds me of Lonely Island's "When Will The Bass Drop?" but the bass drop is dreadful. NASA's there, On The Road is formulaic kpop & Choose is an out-of-place heartfelt song. Overall Pt 4's a bit different - but like ATEEZ's recent stuff, there are no risks taken at all.

Pop album, holy outdated. Dr. Luke (ew) produces an absolute brainrot stinker trying to reinvoke 2014. The faux-feminist themes are so jarring - as an example, 143 starts with WOMAN'S WORLD, a superficial feminist song with outdated feminist themes, then immediately goes into shallow love songs & club bangers. How can it try to chase fun & energy, and fail so miserably? Perry has put out a truly inauthentic, soulless project, 143 is an abysmal turd.

Folk pop album, the Riptide album. Vance Joy opened for Ed Sheeran's NZ tour - and every person I spoke to about Joy said "oh the Riptide guy". Joy sings cleanly and well. The singles (Mess is Mine, Riptide) hit pretty well but otherwise, the album is pretty standard & clean folk pop. The songwriting is okay but many tracks miss any sort of hook and there's little sonic depth. Nice listen, this is another inoffensive album anyone can play in a cafe for chill vibes.

Experimental hip hop album, AOTY's rating intrigued me. I personally don't have a good time listening experimentally abrasive albums. My Ghosts Go Ghost is discordant, meandering & glitchy when its production goes exotic (including audio cutting out). From what I liked, you feel the emotion from their grief from their bandmate's death. But this album doesn't click for me, it doesn't hit enough nor entice me enough to sift through it again.

Pop rock music made for commercials. I'm using Evolve to describe the Imagine Dragons sound without using the word generic. One, clean vocals with squeaky highs for choruses built as pop anthems. Two, simpler spacey mixes for verses, then overproduced & often falsely grandiose mixes for choruses. Three, sonically inauthentic, sung with little emotion & created with studio sterile instrumentation. The result is this terribly shallow album & band that plagues our ads.

Alt metal album. Empty Hands is upfront a nice first listen. The big thing is the production is very overtuned. Poppy's vocals are mixed pretty clean but I feel the mixing also often dampens her & she doesn't land the energy she's going for. Overproduction throughout, but it's also more noticeable in the second half when the tracks don't have much going at all. Overall not much depth or replayability, but I'm interested to see if Poppy evolves on this sound.

Hip hop album. Tracey Lee is pretty decent on Many Facez, the album is mostly carried by his flows. Decent production, although I find a few songs overly dialogue-heavy. Pretty long album (1 hr 7 min), think the 4 interludes or occasional long intro/ outro was unnecessary. The backing beats are pretty repetitive & simple. Overall it's a fine but overly long & uneventful album. Also: The Professionals has a 45s intro of straight sex in your ears what.

Singer songwriter album, I'm finishing the full Ed Sheeran album discography. No.6 Collaborations Project is a collection of attempts to write tracks in new genres to work for both Sheeran & a plethora of collaborators. Main problem is he's still using his sound & production that give those tracks/ genres an artificial & generic feel, and Sheeran himself often vocally sounds out of place. Many tracks are mid, a few I'd consider bad, but a few that are fun & catchy.

Snooze house album. It's kinda hard to review, because it actually makes me yawn but to summarize - lazy. Drake does nothing vocally except be a extra dreary layer. The lyrics don't go anywhere (why are they so repetitive), uninspired production plus these beats, they're like metronome beats. This album's not even good background music, I get drowsy and stop what I'm working on. Thank god for 21 Savage at the end. Good night album, may I eventually wake up.