Longevity is often characterised by reinvention in music, yet The Ride stalls in its attempted inventiveness, instead finding success in its most pared down and familiar moments.

[Patience] boasts several colourless, uninspired tracks.

On occasion, the record feels quite lazy in its lyrical direction and yet too direct, falling into moments of cringe rather than what could have been perceived as powerful and fun.

It's not always pleasant, but in a funny way, it's quite compelling.

These 10 tracks continually buckle under the weight of Flowers' torrid lyrics, mind-numbing cliches, and woefully derivative song structures.

‘The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace)’ doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation. A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted. It’s at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints.

It’s obviously understandable to attempt to capitalise upon the success of your best-known hit but on This Is Acting, Sia loses sight of what made her such an interesting artist in the first place.

There are sludgy, down-tuned power chords, there are whiny lyrics about how life is constantly unfair (reminder: Korn frontman Jonathan Davis is 45 years old), there is even that vocal tic where Davis sort of cackles like a disturbed demon.

In short, on Hymns there’s something close to an excellent EP in amongst some of the very worst things ever to bear the Bloc Party name.

It has moments of greatness, some bits even a bit Animal Collective, but as a whole it doesn’t gel into an album you can lost in.

'Extinction Level Event 2' is often bloated and monotonous, making its one hour (plus!) run-time challenging to endure. What could be a colourful and important album is unequivocally tarnished by the tedious, repetitive, and needless opening seven tracks.

On Automaton, the band falters under the weight of its previous singles, leaving any possibility for chart success mired in a sound that comes across as tired and unoriginal, and the album listening experience as a monotonous ordeal.

The unerringly loyal will find enough here to sate a hunger for anthemic bobbins drenched in atmospheric production, but there’s little to match the handful of magical songs for which he is known.

It's not truly terrible, but it does feel akin to a musical version of King Kong Vs. Godzilla, two monsters decimating everything in their path until there's nothing left, except the back catalogues.

Courtesy of the blandly produced, overly-compressed vocal deliveries and guitar riffs from Jonas Brothers’ producer John Fields, the act all too easily fall into the inevitable trap of highly-structured song progressions backed by half-baked guitar solos on ‘Same Language’ and underwhelming chorus chants on ‘Kool’.

‘It’s Never Over’ is this band’s best TV On The Radio impression, and ‘Porno’ almost goes G-funk: a pleasant surprise. But undercooked electronics, impotent rhetoric, too-familiar crescendo-ing structures and an overall feeling that this needs further post-production attention render Reflektor an entirely substandard album.

A record of fireworks, but few surprises. The songs kept succinct, punchy, and direct; there’s no house production about-turns, no moments of revelation, just sheer, unadulterated Khaled. It’s like being strapped in to a rollercoaster – at points its exhilarating, at others terrifying, and by the end you’re eager for it to be over.

Unfortunately, the album barely reaches the most reasonable of expectations. The strength of their flawless magnum opus, 'Better Than Love', overshadows every other song on the LP.

Unfortunately, other than aiding nostalgia, there's not much else nice to say about The National Health.

For the most part, regrettably, Geography only showcases a producer out of his depth behind the mic.

One for the fanatical only.

Macklemore remains unsure of himself throughout, lacking the rapping skills and natural charisma needed to get things onto a surer footing. In the end, it’s a sadly fitting album title.

The music on 'Wax And Glue' shows potential, but the overall idea of the record is just too cluttered.

There’ve been worse assaults on the ears, that’s for sure. But for fans of the original eski sound, it’s a shame that Wiley has his eyes fixed too intently on his Ascent.

This album demonstrates that the desire disappeared long ago and that they were simply prolonging their career to delay the inevitable. For Hot Hot Heat, the fire has definitely gone out.

There’s barely a convincing lyric in the album and by the end you’re wondering whether the title itself has been chosen based on the sheer novelty.

It seems to fall between two stools, not supplying enough arena-filling arrogance while never truly indulging the more surprising elements of their record collections.

At worst, it’s forgettable--at others, it’s actually annoying in its repetition.