It's fun, but not a lot to show for four years work.

Somehow, like James Blake and SBTRKT before them, Stubborn Heart have forged strikingly contemporary pop from an alternative future.

Ultimately you have to admire the precision tooling, the cunningly-gauged parallel levels of bigness and blandness, the ruthlessness – the only-too-plausible machine.

Despite their attempts to court the teenagers across the land, it's questionable whether this music has enough quality, variety and ingenuity to truly compete with others who have emerged from the talent hotbed of south Wales, let alone the rest of the world.

An unexpected but endearing valentine to the 1940s and 50s.

So, while he fails to reward those fans who are everything to him with a great collection of pop-RnB, Brown at least gives them reason to believe.

There's intelligence, individuality and character in abundance. But all too often it's caked in dollar-store body glitter and choked by feather boas.

It all adds up to a sassy, splashy modern pop album that rattles through its 10 tracks in a dash under 35 minutes.

These all-star gatherings are more fun for the artists than the listener.

A Moving Picture proves a more nakedly ambitious--in the humdrum sense of the word--follow-up, which struggles to strike the right balance between street cred and pop appeal.

What it's not, though, is a collection that confirms the arrival of a significant solo talent. It's too patchy, too hurried, the powers behind it too eager to capitalise on the artist's current chart success.

The band struggles to dredge up any sort of sparkle, no matter how finely-forged the hook.

More often, however, Orbits has too much going on rather than too little.

The band's weakness is an unfortunate tendency to drift occasionally into MOR territory, and sometimes generic boy-meets-girl lyrics fail to keep the arrangements above water.

The production--by chart-grabbing Fraser T Smith (James Morrison, Taio Cruz, Cee-Lo)--can only bring so much depth or variety to unadventurous songs which are bellowed and wailed with all the subtlety of Florence Welch giving birth to a rhino.

What Good Charlotte don't seem to have picked up along the way are any startlingly new ways of delivering their honeyed ramalama pop-punk. Which could prove troublesome for them in the long run, now that the punk bubble has once again popped.

They sound like a pub soul covers band allowed to let rip on a few originals.

They're probably the only band in history whose latest album would sound better if they did not appear on it.

Talent burns through old-skool rap bangers, ferocious electro body-poppers and teary teen anthems – never a dull moment, never an irritating frat-girl with a “bottle of Jack”.

The 2011 incarnation of Incubus is a depressingly dull and sterile proposition and, really, we wouldn't wish these bland wet blanket anthems on anyone.

The Beginning is a depressing listen, not because the music's that bad, but because it implies that even the most successful pop producer on the planet can't afford to indulge in anything that might be construed as intelligent or interesting, lest the masses run away screaming in terror.

It's dumb for sure, but knowingly so, and its incessantly upbeat vibes do provide something of a lift.

Expectedly inconsistent, Almost Alice is a great idea some distance short of being properly realised.

It is full of catchy melodies and hooks. It is extraordinarily lame. Think of Keane, and remove the grit.

Margins struggles to rise above the ordinary. Fans of Maxïmo Park will not be disappointed, but it's frankly hard to see anyone else caring very much.

While Lopez has claimed that her new public image showcases the real her, she never could pull off the idea of being a real human being with actual emotions on record.

The Devil's Rain, then, is a slightly mixed bag of tricks, treats and travesties.

Much advance word of Lou Reed and Metallica's excursion has been one of bewilderment and dismissal. It may well be, though, that in the fullness of time this is an album that is given the praise it deserves.