A big stinking pile of rubbish.

There’re dudes out there (Google them) who will try and tell you this album has some relevance, that it represents pop, that it’s important. That it’s good. They’re wrong.

Even a past-it Smashing Pumpkins ‘reunion’ with only Corgan remaining is more acceptable than this awful mimickery and that’s not a good place for a band to be.

M A N I A won’t suddenly ignite a revisionist outlook of Fall Out Boy’s career, but it does leave you pining for the earnest giddiness of their pre-hiatus material. This is a feeble gesture of benign, stadium-sized pop that’s been cynically constructed, artificially beefed-up and saturated beyond the point of listenability.

These Are The Good Times People is a mere shadow of its ‘90s counterpart that struggles to retain any of the President’s early charm.

Nobody expected Smith to reinvent the wheel on his second album, but anything is better than limping along on a flat tyre.

All in all, the album is unremarkable, showing only rare flashes of lyrical prowess, and melodically unadventurous. Bugg fails to push boundaries and flounders outside his recent comfort zone, resulting in a record that fails to impress, delivered without vigour.

The feeling [is] that nothing here belongs to Robbie Williams, that he’s officially completely interchangeable, that he’s become trapped in a maze of his own making, and all of the noise seems so very quiet now.

It’s a horribly calculated, horrible slice of anthemic horribleness. Throughout, dreadful lyrics are in abundance, pianos are thumped and drums are bashed.

In general, the choruses are forgettable, the guitars are woefully exaggerated, and the quirkiness that made Weezer a band to be cherished now seems forced and stale.

Come Around Sundown is musical wallpaper for those who purchase such amenities from the likes of Tesco or Asda. It represents little more than a giant turd amidst a sea of mediocrity, several million of which will shortly be appearing in homes near you.

Taragana Pyjarama is unstimulating, oddly soothing in an anesthetized way, hypnotic in the most guileful sense.

Nothing, not even their own past as a middling indie-pop crossover act, is sacred, and it’s sad to see The Kooks attempt to conjure past glories and fall flat.

2 of 2, then, is an incredibly frustrating experience.

The ten tracks here convey no pleasure, and lack any form of belief in their own urgency or desire to be adored.

This is not the sound of the London underground (although the album ends with that particular sound); it sounds nothing like London. Not the London I know. London Undersound was made by a Wandsworth-ite so rapt by his own fears and insecurities, that he has completely lost sight of the bigger picture.

Ashcroft's vocal, which once soared and demanded your attention, sounds languid and forced to the point where one is left wondering if he can muster up any will power himself to sing what are by and large, trite soundbites that could have been written on any number of post-it notes.

The descriptive we’re looking for here is ‘shallow pastiche.’

He's crafted a whole album so stagnantly repetitive that one listen gives the illusion of having already been subjected to the same song again and again and again and again.

The agony is there, but none of the nuance or substance that would make you empathise or relate with it.

The all-over-the-place sounds don’t remotely go together, and not even in a good way.

This is a piece of chewed-out gum; with no viable nutrition, no flavour and no joy. Do yourself a favour and spit it out.

Napalm is a long ass 18 track slog, and the pointless thug boasts scattered throughout the album.

Only ‘Carrion’ remotely rocks in any way, but only through a lukewarm shower wash.

The orchestra tries so desperately to stage this cool retro show, but there are so many glaring holes in the script.

By aiming to sound like U2 and Pink Floyd, AVA ends up sounding like an emo version of an even more plodding Coldplay.

Despite the so-called grandiose statements of intent such as strings, pianos and soul-trained female backing vocalists, this is simply a case of mutton dressed as lamb and those lambs eventually being slaughtered.

Don't you want to think? Don't you enjoy thinking? Or do you instead prefer listening to background whining? Are you happy to settle for this?