Time and time again, this patchy album is dragged down by obscenely flashy production, a surfeit of ideas that conspire only to sabotage the songs themselves and writ large across it all, Fyfe Dangerfield's interminable, platitudinous emoting.

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

There is a childishness about CocoRosie's sound, but rather than a tame tweeness, it's the dark perversity of a genuinely infantile imagination.

Whether they can co-exist with today's nu breed is another question entirely, but 'Beyond Good And Evil' just about overcomes its sameyness and provides enough flashes of what made them special in the first place to justify their continued existence.

Unsurprisingly, "TP3.com" is overblown and overlong with appearances from the usual suspects - The Game, Twista and the ubiquitous Snoop - and production qualities as impressive as his libido.

There are moments where the mini-pops Joy Division approach hits paydirt, notably on the relentless, single-minded surge of the single, 'Bigger Than Us'. But mostly the trio are at their best when they wriggle free from the colossal shadows they're hiding under.

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

The only thing wrong with this largely excellent album is knowing that will.i.am has better stuff up his sleeve.

Despite the dominance of modern technology, this is still an album that adheres to the blueprint Farrell has laid down in his previous two outfits. More importantly, it moves into new musical territory and, coupled with his brilliantly versatile voice, makes 'Song Yet To Be Sung' a triumphant return for the latter-day chameleon of rock.

They're one of those rare propositions in British Pop - A Great Idea On Paper.... Often, it works, leaping off the page and becoming something you'd actually want to slip into your state of the art entertainment hub at the end of a hard day shredding documents.

When she turns from fathoming everyone else's existence to her own, and stops frantically waving her style icon credentials, the genius of hers and Mirwais' partnership is overwhelming.

What some see as derivative, unoriginal bollocks others view as honesty, craft and a lack of pretension.

Back On My B.S. is 50 minutes of largely no-nonsense Busta, fist firmly planted in the mid-'90s. Of course, with that we get the expected ups and downs, but what Busta lacks in album length longevity, he makes up for in force.

If this is what we get - because this is what enough of us apparently want - the end of the music business cannot come soon enough.

This shiny collection of pop, folk, blues, country and rock is mostly about as emotionally engaging as watching Mr Spock watch paint dry... in the dark.

It's almost the perfect R&B album; cool, sexy, inventive and suitably stylish throughout. All that's missing is a couple of killer singles.

Troublingly short on tunes.

Encapsulating just how far Sean has come (if you're a Cash Money CEO, that is) Lil' Jon pops up to do his incomprehensible shouty thing, so ruining, for no reason at all, the only remotely catchy thing here.

The problem is that 'Level II' is a pretty fabulous album caught in the wrong time.

'Storytelling' contains some of B&S's finest songs since their 'If You're Feeling Sinister' peak.

"America's Sweetheart" is a thrilling record. Held together by that extraordinary voice, which sounds even more shredded than it did in the days of "Dick Nail" and "Pretty On The Inside", she can still deliver.

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.

"Riot City Blues" starts fairly poorly and gets progressively worse.

While Relapse is a slightly more energised record than the listless "Encore" (despite a Dr Dre production that is, for the most part, tired and dated), it's hardly the comeback many hoped for.

It's certainly not Joy Division, but there's a bittersweet, melancholy and intelligent edge here that's worth investigating.

Corgan is slowly swamped by the style he's adopted.

'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.

In This Light And On This Evening is a weak, ill conceived and uninspiring effort.

It's a far bolder and more convincing album than her first, and suggests Lewis might be able to pull off an even bigger and more unexpected triumph than winning "X-Factor" and scoring an international hit.

The rest is a lacklustre recast of her debut that displays about as much personality as Duffy's sweetly banal interviews, all of which suggests her production team are a weakened bunch. Like we said, a remarkable return.

This is a determined little bastard of a record by a band in a bug-eyed, rhythmic sweat, who know it’s time to come out with their guns blazing.

Like the three Killers albums, Flamingo is patchy, the sound of a vivid talent not living up to its initial promise.

Calvin Harris does nothing out of the ordinary, but still, he does it well.

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.

Most of 'Dead Media' resembles a third rate Pulp, Denim or Babybird - steeped in tales of sexual disappointment in bedsit land but without the considerable charm, warmth and wit of the aforementioned bands.

Zeitgeist may not boast any platinum-plated singles of the kind that typified their peak, but it's mercifully far less flatulent than latter-day Pumpkins.

Live, there's little doubt, these tracks will find their own groove and grow, but here they're like show dogs, primped and primed and hard to love.

'Beat 'Em Up' is not shit but ain't exactly loveable either. However, it does confirm that Iggy Pop can still kick up a fuss with the best of them even if the end result isn't as legendary as the man who produced it.

For now at least this is the sound of a band trying to do too much at once and sinking under the weight of their heroes.

Represents an ill-advised body swerve from the duo’s idiosyncratic home territory and plunges them deep into the thoroughly becalmed waters of MOR ambient pop, offering up languid, beats-driven, down-tempo tunes that aren’t so much radio-friendly as downright sycophantic.

Scarlett Johansson has proved herself as much a rock queen as a roll queen.

Neither a triumph nor a calamity, EUPHORIC HEARTBREAK delivers just enough to make you believe Glasvegas may still have that perfect album in them some day.

MSTRKRFT make a racket that's impressive at first but eventually the echoes of it return to bite them.

He may not possess the eloquence or understated flair of a (Neil) Hannon or a (Richard) Hawley, a fact highlighted as the cheesy horn arrangement of 'Run With The Boys' sends things all a bit too Phil Collins, but most songs here play host to a charming menagerie of ideas and perhaps prove that the band dynamic he's lusted after to this point was the one thing holding him back.

Ultimately, D12 have made the fatal mistake of reducing themselves to the pitch that probably won them their deal: "think horrorcore rap, Gravediggaz-style, mixed up with middle-everything baiting lyrics even more extreme than Eminem." And that's not enough.

While she's been guilty of gluing sure-fire singles together with rotten fillers on her previous two albums, Britney uses this opportunity to take the odd risk and adds a welcome edge to her sound.

Not quite as effortlessly enormous as 1999's blistering 'Synkronised', 'A Funk Odyssey' nevertheless won't disappoint anyone taken with the band's direction on that record.

The World Is Yours is one of the year's worst albums.

Overall, the effect is post-punk Cure with swathes of Ride in heady moments and, as overblown and unlistenable as these amassed elements might sound in your head, it's actually fantastic.

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

An effective, but ultimately generic, pop album.

Curtis doesn't sound like it was much fun to make, and it isn't much fun to listen to.

Songs that used to bounce and strut with foolhardy glee now amble, lamenting, the stench of booze and self-pity turning Romance At Short Notice into a wake.

There is barely a note here that did not require a degree of bravery and chutzpah.

Far from a behind-the-scenes veil-lifting, though, 'Doggumentary' largely ensures that the worst preconceptions of self-indulgent hip-hop remain in place.

To live in their world is like being trapped at an idiot's convention and almost – but only almost - as bad as Limp Bizkit.

They ‘sound’ well-written without actually being so – the ultimate in pop sophistry.

There are some truly great moments on "Senor Smoke".

Deceptively hard to resist.

Despite a preponderance of uptempo songs that puts Freedom in similar territory to Ne-Yo, the record is still very recognisably Akon.

If not a match for the brilliant yet underperforming 'Big', The Sellout certainly maintains high and admirably consistent standards.

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

Where the likes of [Gwen] Stefani and co manage to tie eclectic albums together with the strength of their personality, Fergie never actually comes close to showing what she really sounds like, leaving "The Dutchess" as an exceptionally random R&B mixtape.

Relentlessly bland and bourgeois, "Twelve Stops And Home" sounds like the product of focus-group analysis.

The big-beated momentum of yore is bogged down in McClure's new graceless Gallagher sneer and left to stagnate by a band more interested in re-heating anaemic Kasabian-esque psychedelia than building a plinth from which to preach.

Winner Stays On proves that crossing over needn't be a terrible business.

He preens, poses and struts like a self-proclaimed and extremely delusional love god.

A bit of judicious pruning to remove the filler tracks would have resulted in a cohesive, dynamic album that would have easily been their best release to date.

A darkly, slathering record of frustration and disillusionment, “Language. Sex. Violence. Other?" may, in time, even come to be seen as one of the true masterpieces of the noughties guitar revival.

Everything about this album smacks of contrivance and careful planning.

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 shows that respecting your roots needn't result in stagnant, bookishly reverent music, and that learning your history can be a fine way of looking forward.

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.

The problem is, Go Hard's constantly unsure if it wants to top the charts of its own accord, dominate Radio 1 with big-name collaborations or avoid getting friendly with the mainstream at all, and so flits between the three hoping no one will notice.

There are moments where Usher's old charm and vocal velvetiness briefly resurface and remind the listener of what a bright talent he once seemed....But these highlights are rare, and Raymond vs Raymond mostly sounds as shallow and unappealing as its singer.

Carr has always wanted to create his very own sound, and for the first time we are starting to hear it here.

Sadly for such weighty themes of trust, betrayal, loneliness, living out of a suitcase and long distance relationships, the lack of true darkness amongst the sweetness and light is a little frustrating.

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.

Uncle Dysfunktional won't compel a new generation to discover the back catalogue or question the popular depiction of the Mondays as cartoonish buffoons.

A dismal and insipid collection of retrogressive mid-tempo ballads and textbook alt.rock moves.

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

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.

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.

There are no surprises or unexpected turns and the overall dearth of spontaneity ensures an empty and shallow experience.

He's spitting distance from a brilliant concept album about love and suburbia, but he keeps pulling back.

This may be a much welcomed return for Lady Sovereign from the wilderness, but in the case of Jigsaw, it would seem that she's missing a few pieces to make this comeback a complete success.

Essentially a homage to The Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and fellow Minnesotan Prince, "The Handler" proves that Har Mar possesses a fine R&B baritone, is an able rapper and pens exceedingly funky, party-primed tunes with a perfect pop core.

It's no pop masterpiece to rival The Beatles, Madonna or Michael Jackson's best. But then again, few things are. If however the bench marks are Aguilera and Pink, it's only fair to say that Ms Hilton or rather her album, holds its own.

Driving yet jaunty guitars abound and backing chants fill the required spaces, yet it all comes across too much like a sub-par parody of their former selves.

Ethical incontinence notwithstanding, Xzibit is an undeniably charismatic vocalist, with a gift for pure, jolting, testosterone-packed aggression that leads to some rather magnificent moments.

While Lasers isn't the equal of its superb predecessors, there's still much here to admire; even though the fact that there isn't quite as much to love is no real surprise.

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.

While there's nothing as irresistibly catchy as "Under Rug Swept"'s magnificent "Hands Clean", the overall impression, musically speaking, is one of freshness, optimism and energy. But better still, it's smart, and sussed, and frequently funny as hell.

Many of The Libertines' finer qualities are made all too apparent in their absence on "Down In Albion", none quite so painfully as Carl Barat's Django Reinhardt via Johnny Marr charm with a guitar.

In a number of 'mature' developments to their sound they've laid down impeccably produced horns (see bombastic opener 'World War III'), come within millimetres of salacious classic rock in the excellent "Poison Ivy" (watch out for the implied "bitch" in the chorus!) and, on lead single 'Paranoid,' dispensed a chilled-out post-baggy number.

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

Repeated plays just refuse to reveal hidden depths. There aren‘t any. “Around The Sun” is just a really poor album, probably the first one that this band has ever put out.

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.