A real step forward - a challenging and melodic record.

Next time, she needs to dump the tired wild-girl shtick, unleash her lung-power and the world will fall at her feet. For now, this is just another album of production-line US pop.

It is not the Foo's finest moment, but for all its flaws and flab, this meandering record may just become one we all learn to love.

A return to core principles, which has produced a handful of pretty love songs and a solid overall, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel certainly isn't the disaster we were promised, but then nor is it a triumph.

"Howl" burns with just as much commitment and fervour [as the previous two albums]; it simply burns slower.

There just aren't enough ideas or songs to make up for the overwhelmingly mean perspective.

Evidently it's his source material that defines him, and this time it's disappointingly weak.

Had they imploded in some bizarre gardening accident following the release of 'Danger! High Voltage' all would be forgiven. That single still sounds classic and retains the power to get Aunt Peggy off her seat at the wedding reception..... However, the rest appears to be have been cobbled together in a matter of hours.

Like their debut, 'Start Something' is ultimately too long but where it occasionally flags the pace is soon picked up again.

'Demolition' may be a rare example of purely commercial dictates - namely, what was doubtless a label decision to downsize from a threatened four-CD boxed set - improving the art in question.

Even the lesser efforts are superior to typical chart fare.

Off With Their Heads is, thankfully, a subtler, cannier beast, even if it does suffer from some of the same problems as its predecessor.

Not sure what you'd file it under, but while that may worry some, for The Bees it's yet another triumph.

[It] firmly places her at the cutting edge of modern pop.

It makes for some pleasingly approachable music but that's not what he'll be remembered for.

So far so daft but what prevents Gerard Way and co from descending into the po-faced seriousness that blighted Green Day and their preposterous "21st Century Breakdown" album is a sense of fun that has eluded the SoCal punks in their latter years.

It would be crazy to suggest that Roots And Echoes is anything less than consistently fine, but from a band whose initial forays promised so much 'fine' doesn't quite cut it.

It’s both an oddly comforting and exhilarating trip.

While the sound is distinctly Crowded House, it’s darker than previous offerings.

Like on James Blake's album, every swoon is accentuated with the help of a computer and at times just sounds like someone crying and using Auto-Tune at the same time.

"Tha Blue Carpet Treatment" is quite the mesmerising sonic experience.

Not only an opportunity to look back, then, but a joyous reminder that, when at his lowest, Brian Wilson stepped up and did the unthinkable.

Despite the clichéd lyricism and patchy production in places, "Red Light District" contains enough strength and fun to remain an enjoyable and uplifting ride.

For reasons of quality, as well as the inevitable loss of the shock of the new, 'Fatherf*cker' isn't quite the album its predecessor, 'The Teaches Of Peaches', was.

There's nothing on this record that has any danger of keeping you from your beer. There are two gears: fast and slow, shoutalong and sobalong.

Smoke pulls off the neat trick of seeming weightless and disassociated but never slight, playful, yet neither inconsequential nor silly.

As a result of [Leithauser's] strangulated mewls and caterwauls, "A Hundred Miles Off" is at times very difficult to listen to indeed.

Rowland's big problem is that she has the lungs but not the voice, at least not if we take that to mean something distinctively her own.