The Aislers don't always hit their mark, perhaps because the disparate interests at work also contribute to some unengaging instrumental, noise and nearly spoken word pieces. [Apr 2003, p.103]

Alas, it's largely diminishing returns. [Jun 2017, p.87]

Strong, tub-thumping songwriters fall prey to Nashville cliche. [Dec 2018, p.94]

It's a shame Drastic Fantastic disappoints. [Oct 2007, p.92]

Much of Better Living recalls that time when the ugly end of post-Crass anarcho punk segued into the metallic sounds of grindcore... when melody seemed bourgeois and energy was the most valued commodity. [May 2012, p.92]

[Korn] sound both out of focus and curiously out of date. [Feb 2004, p.95]

Where 2008's 2 was frazzled and powerful, this one feels soporific, moderate, even a little slight. [Sep 2010 p.94]

Elsewhere, Lamontange's vocals slip back into mope mode, but his tour band's firm playing and decent string arrangemebts add an aura of depth and substance. [Dec 2008, p.110]

Jackson Browne's return after six years feels dutifully dragged out of some deep somnolence, maybe exhaustion. [Nov 2014, p.90]

A disappointment. [Apr 2012, p.88]

Longtime fans might be appeased. Others may find themselves a trifle bored. [May 2011, p.104]

While the band's strength lies in inventiveness of their composition, the end result isn't as enjoyable to hear as it surely was to make. [Sep 2010, p.102]

By the album's close, however, his vulnerability risks tipping over into maudlin self-pity. [Sep 2010, p.103]

Worth a listen, but not game-changing. [Apr 2016, p.103]

For every aching melodic twist and sagacious lyric, there's a lumpy, sub-Beach Boys dirge and dicing-with-doggerel couplet to negotiate. [Mar 2003, p.103]

[The album] lacks anything distinctively their own. [Dec 2012, p.96]

This is a very real example of "that difficult second album." [Mar 2014, p.93]

Suffers from a paucity of premium standalone songs.... way too relentlessly generic. [Mar 2004, p.101]

The joke's pretty much over after one listen. [Feb 2007, p.106]

A strangely bloodless album heavy on technical perfection rather than the visceral emotion at the core of the best roots music. [May 2023, p.91]

These carefully manicured, self-serving triffles nearly all fall flat, despite the nonstop roll-out of A-listers. [Feb 2011, p.108]

Like a brand-new gadget, it might look smart but Leisure Seizure's obsolescence is built-in. [July 2011, p. 103]

More non-threatening folk-pop. [Jul 2014, p.96]

Surely the key to echoing some of rock's key ancestral voices is having songs strong enough to stand on their own. Shaka Rock simply doesn't have them. [Oct 2009, p.106]

Out of retirement -- and on to the hard shoulder. [June 2011, p. 93]

10-decent-but-not-exceptional songs, Sleeper ultimately sound a little anachronistic; just not made for these times. [Apr 2019, p.89]

Only the tart Princely funk of Boyfriend lets light through lacquered layers of modern pop production. [Nov 2017, p.103]

This is undeniably a better album than they've delivered in some while, but... there still seems to be a lack of conviction in their execution. [Feb 2005, p.100]

This is musical wheatgrass juice: wholesome, virtous, but ultimately fun-free. [Mar 2008, p.115]

Its utilitarian arrangements only highlight how difficult it is to create a worthy cover. [Aug 2015, p.94]

A few songs confirm her gifts....More often, self-satisfaction takes over and the final track's dull. [Nov 2008, p.108]

Despite its promising title, Lust Lust Lust is mighty forlorn. Or, optimistically, transitional. [Dec 2007, p.100]

The first out-and-out dull R.E.M. album. [Oct 2004, p.97]

So Divided is less pompous, but the dynamic likes of Naked Sun and Stand In Silence barely atone for hamfisted stabs at chamber pop, country and The Cure. [Dec 2006, p.108]

What he does less of these days, regrettably, is production, upon which his outside-the-box reputation rightly rests. [July 2011, p. 103]

Here, the tunes are dubbed to within an inch of their lives, reduced to fiddly-for-fiddling's-sake electronic bleeps and riffs. [Oct 2011, p.100]

Not quite essential, unfortunately, and you might even long for a bit more shredding. [Jul 2014, p.90]

In Europe, Manu Chao shifts albums by the millions, but there is little here to make one think Britain is missing out. [Oct 2007, p.104]

Overblown and cloying, it destroys any early promise by way of total saccharine overdose. [May 2016, p.86]

More mopey ballads and ad-ready pop songs. [Dec 2013, p.92]

All pomp and bluster, like Coldplay at their most bombastic. [Mar 2004, p.108]

She's somehow too like several other singers and perhaps too unambitious a writer to immediately engage novitiates. [Mar 2003, p.114]

On one hand, there are well written songs here, served up on a bed of country tunes via Jack White's rarefied, obsessively aesthetic Third Man label. But then there's the cheap, digitised sound, with all the charm of a Hallmark Country Christmas album dropping an '80s home organ down the stairs at Nashville airport. [Jun 2022, p.86]

[Mykal] Rose's takes on Screaming Jay-via-Nina Simone's I Put A Spell on You, Roosevelt Sykes' 44 Guns and Johnny Otis's Bad Luck Shadow are superb roots with Rose's voice imbued with passion and sincerity. The remainder falls miserably short though, due to mismatched material, misdirection and worst, liberal use of incongruous heavy blues-rock guitar. [Aug 2019, p.97]

The overhaul, surely, needed to be much more far-reaching. [Mar 2014, p.88]

Certainly, these times demand an earnest folk-punk poet of the poeple, but Turner's tracts are a little too woolly to truly connect. [July 2011, p. 105]

There are some very bad lyrics on this album. [Dec 2007, p.99]

Inessential recordings predating the Tuaregs' breakthrough by a decade. [Dec 2022, p.93]

Frustratingly, Adams' insistence on releasing his every whim means that for each wonderful My Heart Is Broken or Pa, there's a rather ordinary The Hardest Part, dreary Silver Bullets or simply stinking Dear John. [Oct 2005, p.112]

The quartet's attempt ti create something like The Chemical Brothers' patchwork futurism, it is influenced by frontman Jack Steadman's global travels, but ends up sounding like a bunch of Gap Yah students discovering foreign climes fir the first time and leaning too hard on the console's Arcade Fire 2007 button. [Mar 2014, p.90]

There's some terrific and accessible stuff here.... but the result is still an album that retreads old Placebo themes. [Apr 2003, p.110]

It's when Duffy and co stop trying so hard that the album fairs best. [Jan. 2011, p. 100]

Fourth outing for the hirsute folk/pop alchemist. [Feb. 2011, p. 107]

They lack a style or personality of their own. [Jul 2005, p.106]

Their fourth album largely abandons any subtlety in favour of a scattergun art racket. [May 2016, p.91]

Freeforms about football, his old tunes and beyond, to variably potent digi-dub backings. [Aug 2013, p.98]

Brooklyn collective with ex-Le Tigre members party like its 2003. [Feb. 2011, p. 107]

Many are banal love songs, devoide of narrative impact, or even identity. [Aug 2006, p.90]

They all bed down with perfunctory efficiency as the voaclly gifted, lyrically vague Mraz holds court with a nylon-string guitar. [Feb 2009, p.112]

The southern legend's first solo outing in 14 years. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]

Lostprophets neuter any genuine bite their music may have had with slick, histrionic choruses that render them as impotent as the dozens of other MTV-worshiping derivatives. [Feb 2010, p. 92]

Ziggy never quite manages to be his own man here. [May 2014, p.86]

It's a curiously dated backdrop that, although sitting well with Smith's occasionally pompous lyrics, does no favours to the singer's foghorn baritone; a problem that might have been saved by some radio-friendly tunes, which are notably thin on the ground this time. [Nov 2009, p.90]

This fuzzy psych soul suffers from too many Stones riffs, not enough fresh ideas. [Nov 2015, p.96]

If his lyrics do have merit Chabot obscures them with generic electro-riffs. [Aug 2009, p.98]

Lyrically her songs are as politically charged as ever, musically they're laboured experiments in style. [June 2010, p. 94]

The song titles alone tell the story: The Long Con; Stop Bitching, Do Something; Big Lie; What Are You On Facebook? Plus 24 (24!) more tracks that take a swipe at a modern world controlled by conspiratorial forces. ... Even the music is largely route-one. [Jun 2021, p.87]

¿Cómo Te Llama? is not a bad record, just so unrelentingly average that you wonder how in this age of music biz recession, it could be worth anyone's 14.99. [Aug 2008, p.112]

A major step up, until Nas fluffs the rhyme ball spouting credulity-testing conspiracies. [Sep 2018, p.96]

Her voice is a capable blend of vibrato and latterday R&B melisma, but also suggests a diffusion-range Amy Winehouse - something exacerbated as processed show-tune verses often leap into artless pop choruses. [Dec 2009, p. 96]

This debut feels more about high budget pop aspirations than the vintage rock'n'roll doo wop influences and 'soul' which Brown has been talking up in interviews. [Aug 2009, p.94]

The lyrics are full of fleeting assignations and gruff, bumper-sticker wisdoms, apparently seeking to draw hard-bitten romance from the business of being in a band. [Jul 2003, p.107]

Can be hard for mere mortals to swallow. [Oct 2011, p.104]

Clever-innocent, it's a bit Cerys Matthews, a bit Bow Wow Wow... minus the tunes and larger-than-life character to get stuck into. [Dec. 2011 pg. 94]

Paralytic Stalks is not an easy listen, but neither is it a good one. [Mar 2012, p.98]

The record's near-constant gloom and woolly arrangements are difficult to digest. [Feb 2004, p.99]

It intrigues more than satisfies. [Apr 2005, p.100]

It's rather an unsuccessful mish-mash, especially given the aggressive diversity of the guest stars. ... But the weakest link is Morello's hyperactive and ultimately distracting tic towards Skrillex-esque techno bursts, bleeps and squelches, which ensure The Atlas Underground will age worse than MAGA hats. [Dec 2018, p.84]

Her syrupy soul often fails to mesh with B.I.G.'s taut flows. [Jul 2017, p.96]

Keep Calm...is a perfectly good album, but it strives for nothing more. [Dec 2009, p. 90]

Rather than gaining urgency Tomboy instead feels rhythmically constrained and sonically muted. [May 2011, p.100]

The whole affair comes off like a desperate bit of trend trawling. [Feb 2004, p.99]

In its Thatcher-ite commitment to pop perfection, it turns the art of the album into a sausage factory of hit making. Alexander's Years & Years sounds like a ragbag of contemporary influences rather than possessing a distinct sound of its own. [Mar 2022, p.85]

Lights does have its moments: the strident "Uner The Sheets" and the odd sounds of the Frankmusik-produced "Wish I stayed" stand Out. But when they're placed next to the overwrought, cliched ballad "The Writer" or the dodgy Europop of "I'll Hold My Breath" it adds up to a rather bland listen. [Apr 2010, p.92]

Portamento does not convince. [Oct 2011, p.105]

Represents a giant leap backwards. [Nov 2001, p.112]

Mills' slightest work by some distance, The Fifth is evolution in reverse. [Oct 2013, p.88]

The thick strings lead to fumbles, as imagination is constrained by technique. [Sep 2009, p.104]

For every shot that hits the target, however, another flies into the blue. [Sep 2005, p.92]

A pretty disappointing work of rock ordinaire. [Jun 2006, p.112]

Beneath The Skin becomes a cautionary take if how going for "affecting" can end up just terribly overwrought. [Jul 2015, p.90]

A record, which, though obviously heartfelt, never sounds unified. [May 2015, p.98]

Largely insubstantial. [Aug 2017, p.97]

The heart of the album sticks closely to their well-tried formula: sing-song melodies and puerile lyrics set against a steady backdrop of numbingly bland riffage. [Jan 2004, p.106]

This album delivers rather less than the hoped-for thrilling mix of Latin rhythms, scorching organ and lyrical blues-mariachi guitar solos, but does so in bulk. [Jul 2016, p.96]

Fans of relentless riffing may be sated, anyone else will be left feeling a little awkward. [Dec 2005, p.98]

London's Yuck offer scrubbed-up take on the FX-drenched guitar pop of Pavement or MBV. [Apr 2016, p.96]

It's impressive, but heavy going, with scant trace of 50's acerbic humour. [Apr 2003, p.114]