A great straight-down-the-line rock 'n' roll album.

[His] most satisfying collection of material since 1993's "Wild Wood".

They lack, for example, the ribald ugliness of Suicide, another big influence--but they deserve acclaim for sculpting the work of so many doomy forebears into something that, in their field, has rare pop purpose.

The fact she's delivered an album which is vivacious and entertaining despite its obvious flaws means this cat probably has at least one more showbiz life left.

It is a rarity: a proper album, from a proper pop star.

Despite some great tunes, his high-pitched, duck-on-helium vocals start wearing thin, becoming the detraction, rather than the attraction, of this album. Had it been 15 minutes shorter, The Lady Killer could have been this year's top pop album.

Broken hearts litter pop music of course, but the way this 24-year-old almost welcomes desolation into her life is nothing if not fascinating.

Like a new friend who turns out to be a bit of a bore when you let them dominate the conversation, repeat listenings reveal an album bravely attempting to be a monumental statement on the state of life and love but falls short.

A confident and accomplished debut, and a pleasant, agreeable diversion.

All in all, this a whimsical, unhurried and enchanting effort.

As it is, with all their knobs set to downbeat, there's something restrained and knowing here that will trouble some newcomers. Still, there's very little on "xx" to suggest this band will end up on the compost heap.

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.

If the hardcore fanbase feel a blanch coming on, this isn't all wilful eclecticism gone mad. King's work is The Fall's unifying factor that keeps it cohesive.

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

Much of It's Not Me's bummed-out vibes seem rooted in sound artistic sense, but musically a sunken-eyed pallor has replaced the rosy-cheeked flush and, you know what, it all gets a bit...draggy.

Jennifer Hudson would do well in stepping outside her comfort zone.

We're all for experimentation, but please: Nashville?

It's almost like neither [Dave Fridmann] nor the band could decide whether they were making an electronic or rock record and in dithering between the two settled on the awkward, frustrating middle ground.

For now, it's way more than a stop-gap but sadly not the second coming you might have been hoping for.

It's all good sauce, one supposes, but as Mills wheels out of earshot, tongue and balls dangling in the warm night air, it's hard not to wonder where the thoughtful, sullen kid whose eyes cut like lasers through sink estate bull**it has got to these days.

Where once the bark was of Beck, we have - and this hurts - Wings.

Though their efforts to keep the flame of rock'n'roll burning bright are to be applauded, the feeling that the real standard bearers are tuning up elsewhere is impossible to shrug off.

Ultimately fails to capture or update the magickal mysticism of the music it seeks to draw from.

Your record collection still only really needs a couple of Chk Chk Chk 12"s and that Out Hud album, but don't pass on the chance to see them live.

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.

Only lunatics would rank 'Heathen' alongside Bowie's '70s masterpieces. But for a 55-year-old who's spent such a surreally long time floundering, desperately searching for a) the zeitgeist and b) a tune, it's actually rather respectable.

Not a bad record by a long stretch but a disappointment nonetheless.

Who You Are doesn't entirely deliver, but even when its songs fall short of the promised hype, their potential is obvious.