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.

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

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

Flawlessly interesting is what we’ve come to expect from Williams and Hugo, but "Fly Or Die" is rather interestingly flawed.

It’s all rather marvellous.

Weird enough but familiar enough to spook the status quo without blowing it out of the water, they will, hopefully, continue to make music for a very long time.

Lyrically, Shotter's Nation brims with the insight and eloquence with which Doherty continually surprises you.

With his languid, prolific philosophising, twisting humour and consistent melodic achievements, its tempting to see Benji Hughes as a kind of cartoon successor to Stephen Merrit and The Magnetic Fields (though it's more "25 Songs About Women 'N' Stuff" than "69 Love Songs"), but either way he's just snuck in from the back of the field with one of the most endearing albums of 2008.

And though the influences/peers - Stooges, Velvet Underground, Krautrock, Spiritualized, Primal Scream - remain the same, this exceptional collection of visionary psychedelia is more ethereal and somewhat bereft of the cloaked fug of death threats, serial killers or "eggs bearing insects hatching in my mind" that made 'Contino' such a brain-damaged future Goth classic.

'Deep Down & Dirty' just reminds you how influential and important the Stereos were, and continue to be.

Yet cartoon and divorced from reality as it is, his vision is so vivid that it never fails to seduce and fill you with the uneasy sense that maybe, just maybe, somewhere his disturbing dimension of bums and misfits really does exist.

She might be mouthy, trendy, shallow and opinionated without having all of the facts, but MIA creates terrific pop moments.

As is to be expected given Adele's tender years, thematically things are a bit monochrome.... All this, however, is forgiven with a listen to the highlights, such as the sweet acoustic guitar-led 'Daydreamer.'

What pulls this album back from being anything but revelatory, however, is not only the typical lazy rock the band are purveyors of, especially 'Fire' and 'Fast Fuse,' but also the diabolical lyrical content that's employed throughout West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

Let's be clear about this: Head First is by no means a bad record, with its lush pop gloss and flickers of melodic loveliness. But it is a bad Goldfrapp record, their flimsiest and least adventurous yet.

In a nutshell this is The Beatles most average album with some of the fluff removed.

Norah's most personal collection of songs to date.

There's little not to love.

Often thought of as ahead of his time perhaps Byrne is now in the perfect position to articulate the angst of socially unskilled western white men who find themselves taking over the world via new technology. The album's glut of different rhythms speaks of a man trying to find his groove.

It's almost all too familiar, so much so that it's hard to hear the tender songs and mesmerising instrumentals in their own right.

All told, it's a rag-tag collection, and one that comes short of the band's high standards even allowing for the commercial backlash.

This is a relentlessly exciting album--it's just that sometimes you feel it would be more rewarding to turn off the boosters, slow to a float, and take in the view with awe.

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

In many ways, 'Evil Heat' comes across as something of an amalgam of the Scream's many phases and, because of that, it doesn't necessarily take them forward as their work in the past has done.

By far Kylie's best album to date.

As a debut album, 'Highly Evolved', for all its faults, can be an energising proposition.

A collection of rootsy yet sophisticated, summery soul grooves, with the usual nods to past masters like Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Glady Knight, "Stone Love" is equally at home alongside the sultry, sassy R&B of contemporaries like Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Erykah Badu.

There's so little substance here, it's difficult to engage with the record or its creator.