These pop-centric cuts are, however, where Snoop seems most comfortable, if not most talented.

She undoubtedly has a great record or two in her. This, sadly, isn't one of them.

Worst of all, it turns out that commercially-minded dubstep is--perhaps inevitably--a much weaker prospect than its club counterpart.

Trouble is, despite the band's concerted efforts to beef up and broaden their schtick with a radio-friendly production, too many aspects scream "novelty act".

It sounds as if the band's batteries are steadily running out. Confidence ebbs, emotions run flat, the songs become more and more inconsequential.

It's not just that 'Love Sex Magic' is the highlight, it's Fantasy Ride's only saving grace.

We should laud Young for taking such risks at this stage of his career but 'Greendale' sounds like the sort of small town you spend your whole life running from. Or the place you go to retire.

What it all adds up to is an effective commercial album, littered with potential singles, taking few risks and adding little to hip hop culture.

With “Human After All” the pair are running both on the spot and out of ideas. In making an album comprised of nothing but their stylistic tics – the over-used Vocoder/pitch bender, the monstrously compressed acid squelches, the crunchy, rock guitar motifs – Daft Punk are like a celebrity chef who serves up nothing but his signature dish. Soon, you’ll stop eating in his restaurant.

There is, however, nothing that remotely touches the pop genius of 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' and, by the halfway mark, the album's sagging badly.

These half-arsed stabs at nu-AOR end up pleasing no one, least of all the band itself.

It's a workmanlike and often wearisome ambition that proves the record's undoing, which leaves The Secret Machines V2.0 sounding less the stadium-psych messiahs and more like a trio of very naughty boys.

Bloated over-produced soft rock.

So there it is, bizarre, world-weary, beautiful, touching, self-indulgent but never, never dull ? at least not until at least nine minutes into 'Like A Possum'.

The results are hit-and-miss.

The Ecleftic' just tries to please too many people, open up too many markets, and simply ends up diluting the sound in which it purports to be rooted.

Perhaps it's just that the rest of the songs aren't up to scratch, but this album is a simple case of diminishing returns--what appeared carefree and sparkly-eyed to begin with feels more and more calculated as you go on, what first seemed endearing ends up feeling a little irritating.

It's, well, a thoroughly professional record. And therein lies the problem. Method Man, perhaps more than any other Wu-Tang member bar ODB, has personality to burn, and trying to force it into a box fit for any other hit rapper is an impossible task.

You certainly don't reject it outright though, not immediately, as almost every song at least knows the function of a chorus and everything has a glittery and palatable radiance, but such anodyne, airbrushed electro-pop leaves you searching for the magic ingredients.

Stripped of novelty and goodwill, The Darkness are just a resolutely ordinary band after all.

Matinee is quite good; but 50 years on from the birth of rock'n'roll, quite good just isn't really good enough anymore.

Some of the songs here are forgettable in the extreme.

Gone are the likes of 'Queer' or 'Subhuman', there's no ummph or intelligence. In straining to achieve a smarter, more mature album the band have created the most tawdry epitaph possible.

If you're a fan, there's enough of what you expect from the Mac here not to disappoint.

There's very little on 'Lenny' that isn't a re-hash of former hits.

There’s just nothing new here, merely a rehashing of old ideas both musically and lyrically.

Palatable but bland easy-listening.

Unfortunately "Tourist" is derivative in only a one-dimensional sense: its imagination stopping where Wayne Coyne’s begins.

"The Beautiful Lie" isn't without its merits but their appearances are few and far between.

Ms Dynamite's irate sloganeering may look effective on paper, but until she relearns how to connect with the everyday world, this is little more than ranting in the mirror.

The thing is, charisma and human warmth – or at least a plausible facsimile of them – are vital to the success of a ballad. And the bald fact is that Beyoncé and her handmaidens are utterly incapable of faking sentimentality.

Underneath the goop, the recycled riffs wear thin and there is such lack of songwriting that, though they might get heavy, tracks also get dull quickly. But here's the rub: some of it's catchy and ridiculous enough to be enjoyable.

His 12th album is so girly it should be wearing pink tights and a tiara.

Eliza Doolittle is an album of potential but, for the moment, that's all it is.

Hooks hit their fleshy mark here and there--'Dead End' is a compulsive, '80s-flavoured high and 'High On The Heels'' clipped acid house proves endearingly gauche--but it's cold comfort on a record that fleshes out a promising template to only diminishing returns.

Much of this album fails to engage.... There are lengthy attempts at covering too many bases, when fewer distractions would have allowed Cook to create music with direction, not just location and motion.

So smooth nothing sticks, there's no guts, no depth and no matter how much he protests to the contrary, nothing to believe.

Much of the album bathes radio-friendly funk-rock in a kind of Balearic after-glow--it conjures that feeling of bittersweet triumph many will have felt as last night becomes this morning, the conquering of a dark that is now needed if sleep and recovery from such an act is to be possible.

For the most part, "The Understanding" saunters along without a trace of urgency, which is unfortunate as Royksopp were always at their best when electronic ingenuity rather than pastel-shaded synth washes were holding things up.

'Celebrity' does have it's moments. Sadly both of them are at the beginning.

Mostly this is U2 trying too hard, caring too much, being too insufferably genuine without having anything to be particularly genuine about.

Occassionally, the songwriting does contain flashes of thoughtfulness.

Throughout most of Untitled, Kelly seems to have taken the worst aspects of "Trapped In The Closet"--it's over-the-head relentless melodies and lyrics--and decided that they'll work in a song until the repetition instead relegates it to wallpaper.

Very much Tricky business as usual, the sound of a staggering talent laid-up with the longest case of musical flu in history.

The paucity of innovative ideas, reliance on old recipes and directionless experimenting make for a fairly tasteless repaste.

Unfortunately, over a third of the songs on this album are ballads, and most of them are fillers at that.

So safe and sanitised it makes The Fugees sound like NWA.

A 93 minute-long nervous breakdown that offers few concessions to the needs of the listener to be entertained.

Though he falls short of wholly convincing, the heart is almost always in the right place: a refreshing change from 99 per cent of those more interested in the image, not the message.

Charmingly forgettable.

The first half of the album as a whole is easy to forget....Cardinology takes a turn for the best around the midway point.

It’s not that "Welcome To The North" is a bad listen, but when you get to track six and you still seem to be stuck on track one, you get the feeling there must be more to ‘the music’ than this.

He still sounds temperamentally incapable of making a bad album, but he's made his first boring one.

"Jacket Full Of Danger" thinks it's funny but isn't - it's often pathetic.

"Crazy Itch Radio"... is the sound of an act running out of steam as it settles for the lowest common denominator with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulders.

They seem afraid to risk a good old-fashioned jungle break-out, the likes of which would be genuinely invigorating.

There's a good, possibly even a great, album in here somewhere, but Kid Cudi doesn't get very close to finding it.

Had the production been toned down a bit, to just Young and some lo-fi synths, these songs would have worked much better. But then that would have invited even more comparisons to The Postal Service. A noble, but ultimately uninspiring, effort.

The follow-up to 'Play' is, essentially, 'Re-Play', a cynical rehash of the melancholic-yet-strangely-uplifting schtick which sold ten million albums and soundtracked every single advert of the last three years.

'Night Train' has been pitched as somewhere between an EP and a mini album, with the impending fifth to be the "proper" follow up to 'Perfect Symmetry'. For their sake, but mostly for our own, this gifted band need to try a lot harder when it comes to that one.

One battering, no-big impression album.

Put simply, this is B-Movie rock: from the death rattle vocals, to the clichéd riffs and hackneyed subject matter.

Naïve, twee, lacking imagination and pointlessly derivative on one hand but - with summer on the horizon and given a forgiving mood – this is also sunny, carefree and great background music to waft over your BBQ.

"9" picks up where the ubiquitous and two-million selling "O" left off. Hoarse howling to acoustic guitar strumming; folksy plucking to bleeding heart mutterings; Radiohead-a-like moments pull of portentous, look-at-me pauses and full band crescendos.

As a collection of songs it tentatively experiments with genres and musical devices so as to appear less of the poor man's B-sides of its predecessor; but at the same time daren't stray too far from the blueprint that made the quartet such a loveable bunch of rogues in the first place.

The production is lame, and the album as a whole is unconvincing in it's pretences as hi-energy, bouncy and above all youthful punk. And Dexter Holland's vocals simply grate after a while. Die-hard Offspring fans will find nothing which deviates from the original plot, so they won't lose any long-term believers from this offering.

Hot Hot Heat's religious devotion to early eighties new wave is simply embarrassing.

His records are not without merit and the better songs here more than deserve to find sizable audiences. But there's no sign that music is going to ever be anything more than an enjoyable sideline for a man whose greatest art continues to be created in other mediums.

While 'Shaman' is less than the sum of its parts and strays into AOR territory too much to ever truly be cutting edge, despite its R&B and Latin infusions, it will, at least in America, sell by the truckload.

Mainly, though, this is a terribly weary album, tedious when it strives to be seditionary, trading on utterly devalued notions of attitude and aggression.

While going reggae was always going to be risky, it's the severe lack of conviction - whether in Burgess's mumblings or songs general vagueness - that's the biggest problem.

Only by The Night will undoubtedly sell bucketloads but there's no escaping the fact that creatively, Kings Of Leon have stalled.

Sprawled over 13 tracks, The Cure have attempted a microcosm of their oeuvre in one volume and despite their lofty ambitions, the results are a decidedly mixed bag at best.

However much electro trickery he has at his fingertips, he needs some songs first.

Its ambitions far exceed its ideas, and the record is sunk by the kind of sonic bloat normally reserved for self-regarding sophomore releases.

It wasn't disco-pop and it wasn't chart-fodder, and sadly for them--and their label--attempts to make them so with the help of Rick Rubin has resulted in a record that sounds similar to the last but with the heart ripped out.

If this fluffy, punk-lite petulance, devoid of any real personality is to your taste, lap it up.

If it were anyone else, this record would be fine. Solid. Entertaining. But it's not anyone else--Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes. As such, you look for more and expect to tune in to find Julian doing the same.

At various times on …Love Revolution, Lenny just doesn't cut it as a songwriter, a lead guitarist (don't even go there), a string arranger and, above all, a drummer. But the man can sing and for that much we, and he, should be grateful.

It's effective, not good. More tellingly, it's catchy in spite of Ke$ha, not because of her.

Why the hell is Ronson being applauded as a wunderkind for basically recycling big beat and hiring some horns?

For the lovers, this patchy album offering moderate advance on its immediate predecessors will probably suffice. But in truth it's an unmitigated failure to reconcile the sound of their past with a cohesive vision of their future.

Bloated, culturally inconsequential and decidedly average, the net result is a band getting far too high on an over-inflated sense of self-importance to the deafening chimes of cash registers the world over.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about Manson's latest record is the couple of anomalies hidden within.

Collaborations with Helicopter Girl on 'Don't Come Around Here', with Macy Gray on 'Smitten' and the loving if overproduced take on of Curtis Mayfield's 'It Was Love That We Needed' stand out as highlights but only because the rest of this collection comes with the words 'will this do' burned deeply into its flabby, bovine arse.

Overlong and oversexed, Futuristically Speaking... stumbles where you will it to stride; something surprisingly staid and mediocre from extraordinary circumstances.

The production, however, is first rate, Dre proving that he really is on fire at the moment. Eminem's microphone skills are similarly beyond question ' though a little too shouty on occasion. It's just that his self-indulgent and irritatingly stupid rants will prove too much for any audience that recognises irony in Beavis and Butthead.

These songs don't sound anxious, or troubled, just lacklustre.

Her bland-o-meter appears to be well and truly busted.

When you don't have the fun of playing spot-the-steal, all you're left with are wishy washy pastiches and a sense of growing fatigue.

There's none of the ABBA or Cardigans influence she claimed, nor any of the fun she seems to have in real life. For now she just sounds like another of pop's Stepford Wives.

Rarely lifting itself above mere mediocrity the album is no doubt destined to provide background music at thirty-something dinner parties and sedate wine bars.

While eight years ago Primal Scream embraced a hard edge that blew our faces off, this limp electro-pop doesn't stand up against the likes of The Knife, who infuse their work with both an inventiveness and emotion that's sorely lacking here.

The album, taken as a whole, is remarkably disjointed, because eight of the 13 songs on it have been written with the intention of dominating a different corner of music land.

The feeling remains though that their broad emotional strokes will have to concede something to intimacy and solitude to ever really win hearts.

A refreshingly old-fashioned orchestral score intercut with rather less appealing jaunts through an atonal avant-garde.

An aptly-named collection that will have even foul-weather fans scratching their heads as to where the pop has gone.

A skull-numbingly dull record, utterly bereft of the anti-establishment rhetoric these boring fakers aspire to.