Taken for what it is, Primus & The Chocolate Factory is a fantastically ridiculous release that should please fans of either [Primus or Willy Wonka].

It’s not the worst album in the world, but it certainly doesn’t live up to the acres of hype that have led up to it. It’s just rather average.

Right at the end, they redeem themselves with a romantic little pop ditty that strays into Colourfield territory, with Clarke's scowling, angry young man tones wrapping themselves as well as they can around gentler, less confrontational sentiments. It's the most interesting thing on the album and if they can harness this flexibility a bit more in the future, they might just find themselves lasting the course.

A monumental, spectacular achievement.

Like its predecessor, the Kaisers' second album is patchy, but does have moments of brilliance.

While it sometimes does become a bit too overwrought, those people who found Tori Amos' vignettes so compelling will find much to love here. It helps as well that there's a light pop touch on many of the tracks.

Moby has already said he doesn’t expect anybody to buy this album. Yet it’s likely it will shift a few units due to its high energy and low filler count, though the shouting does get wearing near the end. Once again he has confounded expectations, and the result is an album fiercely relevant to its time.

Living Room Songs may not exceed 25 minutes in length but this is still an album to luxuriate in and one that fans of traditional classical composers such as Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki will find to their satisfaction.

Sleep Mountain, the second long-player from The Kissaway Trail, finds the Danish quintet embracing the more sweeping aspects of rock 'n' roll emotional grandeur. And, in large part, they succeed marvellously.

Push And Shove is a decent, solid pop album, but it lacks the sense of occasion and excitement that you'd expect from a band's first album in 12 years.

Futuristicaly Speaking is by no means a perfect album, at times it seems overlong and in places too similar in tone, but it is a solid album that should see Yo Majesty making quite an impression.

Ultimately it’s likely to work best on a cold winter’s night in a remote cottage with just the wind, a raging log fire, a glass of the strong stuff and sad memories for company.

Nelly's latest offering is hopefully the beginning of the renaissance of an artist who most definitely was starting to look guilty of selling out.

It's obvious that they've spent a while cultivating a specific look, but they seem to have only spent half of that time on the album.

It's certainly not a bad album, but for those of us who have followed Truille's career from the start, and have been waiting for this album for so long, it's a disappointing one.

This is the debut record of the year so far, which has effectively raised the bar by which other bands will be judged in the future.

Hurts can do--and have done--better than this.

The Orb and Lee "Scratch" Perry recording in Berlin could have been a disaster but this is anything but.

Blonde is an album for those that miss gaudy nightclubs, huge hairstyles and nostalgia, but not much more.

It's maybe a little older and a little wiser than Junior but it just isn't anywhere near as much fun.

The album itself--whilst impressive in its seamless cohesion--does become rather formulaic in Birdy's treatment of the covers, and therefore suffers from a distinct lack of variety.

Those needing something to occupy themselves with during Annie's prolonged absence from the fold will find plenty to keep them happy (and, at the same time, a little bit sad) on My Guilty Pleasure.

The problem with Birthmarks is twofold: a lack of originality and a lack of hooks.

A welcome return of Jamiroquai's trademark blend of '80s funk and pop sensibilities - familiar, yet refreshingly different to so much of their current competition.

Snoop blends the old rap feel with the new style and adds some things to the mix along the way.

No embarrassing side-project, Let Them Talk turns out to showcase heartfelt and sensitively handled musicianship from one of our finest all-round entertainers.

Be that as it may, it is the band's recent failure to effectively collaborate, and for these 11 tracks to properly mesh, that has fostered the mediocrity inherent in A New Tide.

Throughout ARTPOP signifier upon signifier is piled on top of sometimes brilliant melodies, creating enough room for breathless readings of Gaga’s ‘art’ certainly, but failing on the more basic level as engaging pop music.

Hayes has hedged his bets, and it shows. Somewhere amongst these 25 tracks is probably a halfway decent album. It's just swamped.

Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent generally plays it safe, assuming the schtick that’s got Capaldi this far has more mileage in it, which gives the album a competent, workmanlike air.

It is a valiant, but ultimately fruitless attempt to add to the already brilliant back catalogue of the Ramones.

Compared to what went before, The Return Of... is a massive let down.

Out Of Nothing is a wonderfully affecting album that is the band's best to date.

At only 31 minutes long, there is absolute bewilderment at how varied the output on Stills can be; it’s an exhausting listen in general.

The second half of the album is less special than the first with just Drinking Song and the excellent two-note undulations of I Warned You perhaps worthy of a higher placing amongst the band’s fully loaded cannon.

Fink stays close to the sonic templates of both Now It's Overhead and Azure Ray, but has less impact than either.

Their most lukewarm effort. What was, in their early days, delicious in its languor is now turgid and inert, struggling for hooks with only the most tepid sense of melody.

A.M. may pick up some takers for fans of both protagonists' main bands but there is little here that will tempt the casual listener.

The curious would do best to avoid, and die-hard Robbins fans better advised to watch one of his multitude of films.

This self-titled final album, as you might well expect, sounds exactly like Megadeth.

There is no doubt that Prism will do exactly what it’s been created to do (sell millions, provide the backdrop for a lucrative tour and make a lot of money for a lot of people) but it’s safe and cold where it should have been daring and involving.

There are enough excellent moments on War Stories to judge it a success, but there's another sense of missed opportunity hanging over the album.

It's a perfectly satisfactory album, but save for one or two moments of brilliance, there's nothing here that will keep you coming back for more.

Seven Rainbows is too limited to reflect the globe-trotting wanderlust of this character, Alice Gold. It's too tame to namecheck her wishlist, too insipid to do them justice.

This feels like an unnecessary and slightly cynical afterthought, much like a lot of pop music. It isn’t necessarily all bad in terms of quality. But it is utterly dispensable.

This is basically the sound of 2003 with the addition of up-to-date electronics. There’s nothing you won’t have heard before, which is a big part of the problem with Collapse.

Ultimately, although the softer, folkier moments merit attention, the album does linger in parts and really could do with a shot in the arm to lift its energy levels.

Yet another unimpressive, tedious release.

All this adds up to a qualified success, but it will certainly split opinion among his fans.

New drummer Alexis Nunez adds a percussive edge, but much credit must go to hip-hop co-producer Inflo for this fresh lease of life.

There are some noteworthy moments where brilliance is glimpsed, but this album seems to be maintaining the status quo rather than sparking a revolt.

A quiet, easy confidence in their abilities and a collection of productions straddling just about every dance music touch-point from the past 25 years.

While it lacks the finesse of the band's previous work, somewhere in amongst all the bluster, soul-searching, adrenaline and anger, the record carves out a space where everything seems to fit together.

Entertainment, though, sounds tame by anyone's standards; and by eschewing their seedy, sweaty origins in favour of clean-cut pop, they've dumped those elements of their act which made them unique in the first place.

Nobody is trying to do anything too contemporary here, and the slight remove these musicians bring to creating contemporary Ross music means we often get a pastiche of her earlier material. It’s effective, but the danger is that it veers tantalisingly close to sounding like an ironic tribute. And so, the album perhaps fares best in its simplest, and most sincerely constructed moments.

It's gentle enough to be background music, lively enough to be worth listening to for the sake of it, and certainly an impressive achievement for a 21-year-old's debut.

Few other modern musicians are as adept at taking such a tried and tested genre and making it utterly their own.

At 22 tracks, its formulaic and mechanistic approach begins to wear thin at times--there's just too much going on to properly digest it all--but as a compendium of chart-ready fodder, Nicki has honed in on precisely what works for her with remarkable ease.

Ultimately, it's an accomplished record that makes all the right noises (in the most literal sense), but it lacks the final wow factor to push it into true greatness.

He doesn't ever disappear too far up his backside, instead keeping an attentive ear on what his devotees might still want to hear.

Closing track The Dogs (featuring Moby himself on vocals) does stretch things out somewhat, it doesn’t spoil the notion that Innocents, while maybe not the creative renaissaince hinted at, is Moby’s best album for some time.

Fixin' The Charts comes with a lofty goal: to grind down the blemishes that mar the rock face of the popular music mythos. But to attempt to "fix" history, to paint over its wrongs with a broad, sneerish stroke, is a gross mis-step in the career of one of anti-pop's savviest purveyors.

So the songs merge into one, and the parts add up to less than the whole. And taken as a whole Future This is a bit much.

It's a moment to rejoice on an album that just feels flaccid in comparison to the youthful debut.

It sounds a bit like they're trying too hard, trying to be too clever in their pursuit of "technicolour joy".

Although long-term Dashboard fans will miss the more fragile moments, the new, big, epic sound is one that suits Carrabba.

Replete with tacky production and recycled ideas, its few merits are stretched to near breaking point.

A Joyful Noise is the sound of Gossip taking their love of dance floor pop to its natural conclusion with their most obvious and accessible album yet.

As a whole, Glassheart is listenable, with a few ups and downs in terms of the quality of the tracks, but does tend to keep to a very steady keel of mediocrity without much deviation.

Too often though these stabs at versatility end up as clichéd impersonations.

World Beyond ends up worth a listen if you happen to be someone who likes ’80s synthpop and classical music in equal measure. Whether there’s much here for anyone else is moot.

Breaking Up may sound tinny, it may grate occasionally, and vocalist Russell The Disaster's voice may well get on your nerves after a while - yet you'll be hard pressed to find another record this year with as much soul and honesty as this one.

Shifting perspectives and clever juxtapositions are all over this album, Middleton and Shrigley have created an album that on the face of it appears to be simple, but there’s untold depth here, as well as some endlessly creative swearing.

Diplo's original production work is the real joy of this compilation though, and probably the crowning gem is 'Solta O Frango,' from the sublime Bonde Do Role album.

Ultimately, there are some really strong pop moments on here, but they’re overshadowed by inane, inert, insignificant drama-queening of the highest degree.

The feisty personalities and powerhouse vocals have stayed intact, making it even more of a shame that the very essence of the group seems to be absent on London With The Lights On.

A statement for all of the limp new rave pretenders to pack up and fuck off, a return to form rarely sounded or felt so exciting.

To be blunt, much of Smoke + Mirrors is horrible to listen to. And yet, one can’t help but admire the band’s ambition and, on occasions, their apparent lunacy.

One man's pop is another man's weirdness. And weird, The Third Hand certainly is.

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about dance, and the experts out there might be thinking this album features the 'tune' of the summer, but for a former Simian fan, this is nothing but a huge disappointment.

The slower songs do have the effect of balancing the album. Even some of the upbeat tunes, usually The Little Ones' strength, are sometimes in danger of veering from endearing into cloying.

This is perhaps not the classic Definitely Maybe has become, but with their army of live followers accumulated since Christmas, combined with that ready made clear charisma and cocky confidence--if anyone can revive Manchester, it is the Courteeners.

For them, you feel, everything else is incidental--by-products of an already winning formula. For at the heart of each of the songs here is a touch of resonance--the kind that all the best pop records have.

There's not one duff moment during the album's 50 minutes - it's pop music to be treasured, loved and listened to for years to come.

While the melodies are stodgy and predictable, the lyrics don't help a great deal.

If you've approached Herbert's music before you'll already know to expect the unexpected. If it's your first time, use all the surround sound you have and revel in the power of free musical speech and a fantastic update of timeless jazz styles.

The album may start well, but there is very little on the record that will last long in the memory.

On the whole Start And Complete is a singular and fearless album that conveys significant emotion, rewards repeat listens, and shows what can be achieved when a band's approach to music is defined by bravery and vision.

This album provides a gateway to a spine-tingling and thought-provoking experience which more than compensates for the intermittent poor man's Bjork moments.

It's those lyrics that make much of this second album such a disappointment.

It seems that the first principles that got Aeroplane their quality remixes--a real sense of atmosphere, and slow disco-house beats that might be regarded as 'cosmic' in some circles--are only fleetingly glimpsed. Deluca has proved that he can comfortably write in a number of different styles of music--but on the next record it might work better to stick to the ones he has truly mastered.

Aided by conductor and arranger John Wilson, who coaxes a first-rate performance from the London Classical Orchestra, Ocean's Kingdom is an accomplished if unremarkable foray into an unfamiliar medium by the ex-Fab Four polymath.

The sense of a missed opportunity lingers.

Weird it may be, but when CocoRosie get it right, as with the cutesy pop and dark piano melancholy mix of Lemonade, or the beautiful ethereal balladry of the title track for example, they are unstoppable.

This is music that originates from the soul, but it is delivered in an entirely soulless fashion.

For all its flaws, it remains a tremendously fun record. But artistically speaking, it’s woefully weak.

A few of the tracks have a moment, usually a chorus, that you might want to play back a few times. But like Editors, taken as an album there's nothing unique, rewarding, or even merely engaging enough to be worthy of another spin.

On Magna Carta... Holy Grail, Jay comes off as even more pretentious than Kanye.