In its lack of cleverness, the album has a certain wide-eyed innocence, and even the songs about hangovers show a generous perspective on life, of which music critics could do well to take note.

there's no denying Format was made by pop geniuses; maybe pop geniuses being slightly hit and miss, but that's still pretty good.

Red Night is a launch pad, doling out tunes and following each eerie throb with a radio-ready smart bomb.

As an album it's neither bombastic enough to immediately grab you by the throat and refuse to let go, nor subtle and intricate enough to demand and reward repeated listens.

Despite something of a slow start, Letherette builds into an expansive, absorbing album, spanning a huge variety of influences and threading them together impressively within a coherent framework.

None of this is original, nor particularly appealing for anybody disinterested in a by-gone era of music production--still it's enjoyable on a level that no amount of cerebral analysis will ruin.

Taken as a three quarters of an hour lump, the narrowness of her vision is brought into sharp relief, as Keeler-Schaffeler struggles to salvage a bona fide record from admirably restless blogging.

It’s an emotional record.

Funplex then: a bit like that school re-union. Good for a few hours’ reminiscing every once in a while but over-familiarity will only breed contempt.

A failed experiment then, all the more painful for the potential it showed.

A few tracks towards the end of In Guards We Trust will maybe sound better once you’ve fully absorbed the single fodder of the record, but the psychedelic moments of ‘Your Man’ just don’t hit the spot for me as they may for fans of later MGMT noise.

Whilst materially an improvement on its predecessor, the move to electronica is superficial.

Listening to Barbara is like watching the England football team; expectations are high at the outset and true to form, things get off to a rousing start. However, after the halfway mark normality sets in, there's an alarming sense of underachievement and long before its conclusion, you're dismissing them as hapless failures.

Hammond does successfully replicate the pop-rockin’ sounds of the past and does it with considerable style to spare.... But like many students attempting to impress their teachers, much of ¿Cómo Te Llama? fails to push things past the established curriculum set by the originators.

It’s not going to convince anyone new to pick up Duran Duran's records and it doesn’t surpass their previous work.

Nevertheless, the casual listener will have little to soak up from here, only surface bruising. The masochists amongst us already know we’re gonna get our kicks from this.

This... might just be too scatterbrained for its own good.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a great album waiting to be unleashed from the Brooklyn trio in the not-too-distant future. They just haven't given themselves time to make it yet.

Take My Breath Away begins expansively, but rather than proving to be a promising start the opening track turns out, in fact, to be the highlight.

Perhaps the highest praise of Lights Out is that it portrays the gamut of romantic and sexual longings and emotions of adolescence with the honesty that you would expect from someone who recently experienced them, but with poise, melodic nous and a musical maturity that doesn't forsake youthful vitality.

It'll take about half an hour before you are asked to leave, but it'll be avery special half an hour that you'll only slightly and in some ways regret.

History of Modern is a record for the die-hard OMD fans only and those who have followed them throughout their career up to their last record 14 years ago might enjoy acquainting themselves with new, but familiar sounds.

It’s a mixed bag then: sometimes they hit bull’s-eye, other times they miss the board altogether, but the erratic results reveal a band dragging themselves out of their comfort zone.

It continues one of the most singular artistic visions of modern times and while it may not push it any further it’s often so damn charming as to make you forget about all that and just drift away into Lynch’s meditative world, in wrong love with the weird.

Treat Where Were You When It Happened? as the, in a very real sense, dry run for their shows. Their fun house is as much Pat Sharp as it is the Stooges, but it’s not without its merits.

For all the nostalgia and bland meanderings it is worth visiting this record for the closing tracks alone--but you might not want to come back too often.

A few clunkers aside, the songwriting is sensational throughout. And Jones’ voice is more cat purringly perfect than ever.

Well, there is a lack of faults, sure, but there’s not a lot that grabs hard.