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]