But despite the lack of surprise, Gold Rush is a fine, rollicking jig, and Sparrow's skeletal voice and uke combo feels like it's been pulled from the ground still caked in Prairie soil. [Feb 2010, p. 94]

There are glimpses of Curt's former shambling genius; I Quit and Pieces Of Me are both mournfully melodic, while Tarantula has the nimble bluegrass pickings of Up On The Sun-era Meats, but elsewhere rap-metal stupidity (Hercules) and over-polished rock plodding (Batwing) sour the beans.

[An] almost equal measure of intriguing and tiresome music. [Jun 2005, p.108]

Shave Devil's Playground of nine tracks and repackage it as an EP and it could conceivably be the comeback of the year. [Apr 2005, p.98]

Overall, the pickings are too thin for a band of their capabilities.

For all its country rockin' appeal, Monsoon lacks the emotional charge of its predecessor. [Feb 2004, p.98]

Half of Release feels like an old routine -- looming melancholy and not-quite-cheery disco by the pound. [Apr 2002, p.108]

A clumsily executed, ghoulishly self-regarding mess. [Mar 2006, p.94]

The Id simply turns up the levels on what made her debut so big, in the process overshadowing the background detail that made that album so special. [Oct 2001, p.128]

Often, Sinead's words are infected with the pernicious post-therapy psychobabble that blights the contemporary female singer/songwriter...

There's got to be something better, man. [July 2002, p.94]

Keeps an unsteady path between fine altered-state atmospherica and irritating cosmic twittering. [Feb 2004, p.100]

Given time, fans will warm to Peasant, but ultimately the inconsistency of it's songwriting is a tad disappointing.

These songs move so languidly they seem self-pitying. [July 2002, p.104]

In a nutshell, if you liked the previous stuff, you'll like this... it has as much right to a place in the world as Huey Lewis and the News ever did.

Though Black Jesus and Graves To Dig weld slow-burning hip-hop beats to politically astute lyrics, elsewhere the abundance of self-conscious singing and menopausal guitar noodling sees the album shuffle, uninterestingly, towards the middle of the road.

The best songs... sound as if singer Gary Lightbody spends a lot of time sitting in the dark pretending to be Lou Barlow. [Sep 2003, p.108]

You finish listening to 18 feeling as if you've heard a decaffeinated version of Play. [June 2002, p.98]

Gentle, reflective, angsty girl'n'guitar fodder that's often more worthy than interesting. [July 2000, p.104]

Though never dragging its feet, it rarely stretches its creative muscles.

Sadly, the songs are less noticeable than the urge to strangle the drummer. [Mar 2005, p.101]

It doesn't help that the album features a glut of dull mid-tempos. [Nov 2012, p.95]

Sometimes erratic and headstrong, at others whimsical and somewhat listless, it ultimately sounds like an unsatisfying curio. [Nov 2008, p.110]

Mess's crepuscular predecessor felt both more innovative, and more likely to open up Liars' demographic. [Apr 2014, p.92]

Partly dependent on the oft-derided production tics of '80s pop and soul, and partly a lagging stab at a (fairly) contemporary dance album, it may even disquiet the Toddheads. [May 2013, p.84]

The possibilities of "first ideas" is fatally undermined by a lack of ideas. [May 2011, p.110]

[Highly Suspect] may alarm those who recall grunge and nu metal. [Jan 2017, p.104]

Much of this album's re-booting of Waits' back pages in an ambient '80s style is fussy and forgettable. [June 2008, p.112]

No One Ever Sleeps, even with harmonies from Robin Pecknold, feels not magical, but hollow and sluggish. At the rockier end, Heartbreaker adds Arcade Fire urgency and may score alt-radio love. The rest, however, is lukewarm. [Jul 2012, p.83]

While Grace Potter's vocals are unquestionably impressive on this fourth album--she still hasn't carved out a trademark voice of her own. The music is equally bland. [Sep 2010, p.102]

There's substance to 'Long Sad Goodbye's accusing lament for his late father and Vietnam's denunciation of the Iraq war, but Kravitz generally limits himself to muscular yet uninspired multi-instrumental expertise and sloppy-thinking hippitude. [Mar 2008, p.114]

His near facsimile approach to fond memory demands a revitalising new element and he hasn't got it. [May 2008, p.112]

There's no joker in this kind of casual big top tourism, and the album flatly perches in the middle like some neutered, latter-day Green Day. [Jan 2011, p.100]

Viva Brother lack much of Blur's charming artyness and all of the Gallaghers' battering rock immensity and football terrace touch. [Sept. 2011, p. 96]

Pleasant and forgettable. [May 2012, p.84]

There's little attempt to get under the skin of these songs, or really bend them into new shapes. [Oct 2004, p.100]

Sadly, if you possess any of Embrace's four other albums, you'll have heard it all before. [May 2006, p.98]

Moderate in everything but length, Big Wheel And Others seems to go on forever. Again not in a good way. [Nov 2013, p.84]

Unfortunately the reality doesn't quite live up to the concept, because unuually for Squarepusher it isn't quite bonkers enough. [Dec 2008, p.100]

It seems more about Africa's love affair with US urbana, and so less endearing. [Aug 2012, p.94]

Frankly this sort of thing makes Athlete, Snow Patrol et al sound like fire-breathing berserkers. [Oct 2005, p.102]

The tunes dry up alarmingly. [Jun 2007, p.108]

[Boy & Girls] casts Brittany as a soulful singer, but the album is more Xerox copy than feel and spirit based. [May 2012, p.86]

The Straight Hits! is front-loaded with positivist rockers, but these are ramshackle. ... The second half mercifully reverts to Pearson's true calling as a funereal balladeer; even then, the transition's too jarring to cohere to the conceptual/titular framework. [May 2018, p.90]

Sounds like one long mobile phone ad. [Mar 2013, p.98]

Slo Light's sky-high production values come at the expense of soul. [Apr 2014, p.96]

Mashup of overused modern dancefloor styles and rote bragging, with odd moment of classic purple peculiarity. [Dec 2015, p.94]

It buries some strong writing, singing and potential. [Aug 2012, p.96]

The whole album is uncertain and unconvincing. [Jul 2012, p.94]

Mostly you're left with the sensation that the quickie you so hotly anticipated wasn't what you were looking for after all. [Sep 2003, p.104]

She can carry a tune, sure, but as far as expressing emotion goes, she's relentlessly, huskily one-note. [Oct 2004, p.112]

A baffling mix of forgettable riffs and clumsy lyricism. [Jun 2019, p.96]

The vocals are mostly too downmix, the lyrics too inaudible or too banal. [Apr 2011, p.101]

In the end, caution and Horn's glossy production smother the early Yes's spirit of oddball experiment. [Sept. 2011, p. 98]

This sounds like a calculated genre exercise. [Sep 2012, p.90]

A big record, but one that leaves little mark. [Jan 2016, p.88]

With her co-producers, they fashion some perfectly weighted, tastefully adorned grroves but her voice, an idiosyncratic mix of Lucinda Williams and Dolores O'Riordan inflections, sometimes jars. [Apr 2008, p.100]

Sadly, their steadfast refusal to engage the emotions is irritating and alienating. [Feb 2001, p.95]

It's defiantly uneasy listening, becoming more uneasier still when No Help Pamphlet comes in sounding like a lost Badly Drawn Boy Song. [Sep 2017, p.88]

These 15 songs justify their status as outtakes. [Sep 2012, p.96]

In Anderson's own context, it's slight, awkward stuff. [Oct 2008, p.110]

With each album, the Canadian collective's mix of '70s rock and nursery rhyme harmonies gets less raucous and more predictable. [June 2010, p. 94]

Even with a groundswell of atmospheric guitar sounds and ghostly keyboards,the album's slow-burning style never fully ignites. [Aug 2014, p.91]

Large chunks of Everything At Once sound dishearteningly workmanlike. [May 2016, p.92]

Lacking the wit and lyrical dexterity of a Jill Scott or the raw power of Angie Stone, the songs can feel airless and unengaged. [Sep 2006, p.98]

The results are strangely disorientating and at times Carr's brittle, acoustic sketches are smothered by skull-jarring percussion. [Sep 2004, p.92]

Stollsteimer, it seems, is still in search of his own musical identity. [ Jun 2009, p.96]

There's still precious little here that's not been said before with more originality. [Oct 2014, p.93]

Packs too many failed experiments. [Dec. 2011 p. 98]

The third set sounds clean and efficient at the expense of real zest. [Jun 2019, p.96]

Sampling Serge Gainsbourg's quivering strings for 'Sensitized,' however, only serves to highlight the album's lack of truly knee-wobbling moments. [Dec 2007, p.98]

US gypsy folkies ramble aroudn the musical map. [Apr. 2011, p. 94]

Another like this and they should consider naming themselves after a different Tim Buckley album--Look At The Fool, for instance. [Oct 2003, p.107]

Though making the common mistake of over-investing in the frame of guitar and piano licks and bodging the big picture of the song, Ron Wood's tribute is not the worst in the world. [Jan 2020, p.84]

Their pop-rock posturing comes studded with lyrical yearning but lacks real emotional weight. [Mar 2014, p.96]

This lot recall mid-'90s crusty combos like Senser and Back To The Planet, their politics naive and hectoring, their music, frankly, pretty ghastly. [Apr 2009, p.108]

All in all, Duck is the sound of a band trying way too hard. [Sep 2019, p94]

A steely-eyed desperation to succeed is transparent all through Hard-Fi's debut. [Aug 2005, p.112]

There's just one heart-grabbing moment. [May 2007, p.120]

It finds the band stranded in the middle-of-the-road, spinning its wheels amid a mass of musical cliches and Dave Pirner's overwrought lyricism. [Aug 2006, p.104]

In short, a bafflingly sequenced and rather unlovable record. [Apr 2013, p.91]

Incredible Machine, however, is mostly just Nettles having a bawl. [Mar 2011, p.108]

'Welcome To The Third World' is a likeable pastiche of post-Chic funk, but tiresome country skits and Musee D'Nougart's 15 minutes of ambient fart-around are less welcome. [Oct 2008, p.110]

Characterised by both an ill-advised flirtation with cutting-edge electronics and an overabundance of rather washed-out reggae. [Jun 2003, p.98]

The ultimate sugar hit: an occassional buzz but ultimately unsatisfying. [June 2008, p.103]

Man On the Rocks is better when he dials down the mawkish choruses and over-emoting vocals. [Apr 2014, p.97]

This misfires more than its hits home. [June 2008, p.108]

There's a Prince influence, but little real passion. [Nov 2013, p.94]

Soul is only as good as its rhythm section and Drive-By Truckers are just not up to the job, obliterating subtle originals and OutKast and Tom Waits covers with bashing, crashing drums and plodding bass. A missed opportunity. [May 2009, p.97]

The package as a whole doesn't invite repeated listens. [Jan 2017, p.102]

A Hundred Million Suns sounds like a holding pattern for Snow Patrol. [Nov 2008, p.104]

His solos still dazzle and the riff to Notches could move mountains, but too much of Time Clocks suggests Bonamassa by numbers. [Dec 2021, p.91]

[An] underwhelming collection of moderately sweeping, mildly elegant arena pop. [Jun 2006, p.108]

Toriphiles will be delighted to find a generous 76 minutes of songstuff here but the less committed might never get past the veritable encyclopedia of tortured vocal affections that blight the stodgy opening track. [Jun 2009, p.102]

It's all tawdrily familiar. [Oct 2009, p.102]

The former Vincent Frank has filled his debut with a hard-to-stomach collection of shiny pop tunes floating between Alphabeat's sing-along-a-showtunes and Mika's falsetto muggging. [Aug 2009, p.96]

Laurent-Marke's facility for pleasant minor-key ruminations remain her strong suit, but the "stillness" of which she speaks all too often sounds like a stifling lack of urgency. [May 2013, p.85]

Amid the psychedelic soft rock and esoteric twiddling, three tracks stand out. [Sep 2012, p.94]