With Lost Songs, Trail Of Dead certainly have their hearts in the right place; sadly, though, that's the best one can really say about this album.

When certain songs occasionally come within touching reach of greatness, it’s most often through their distinct resemblance to other acts.

[Election Special] is a Texas-sized strikeout.

C’mon You Know’s problem is that, after the initial bluster of his two preceding albums, it just sounds distinctly pedestrian, complacent and reflective. The addition of wisps of trippy phasing, looped drums and a diversion into dub (eek!) all add up to songs that seem just a bit too contrived and calculated to really feel like he ‘means it man’.

Tre! is more whimper than bang.

The whole project is overproduced and overly slick, stripping the nuance out of the hymnal nature of the music, music that should be allowed to breathe so that it can shine.

There are too many unlistenable experiments left in, too much bland monotony. What little goodness remains simply isn't worth the effort.

We know 3OH!3 can be entertaining and danceable, but too many tracks seem rushed, unenthusiastic and even boring.

Taken strictly as an aural experience, it’s a brave and sometimes moving work that nonetheless falls well short of success.

In her first offering, Jessie J's only real failing appears to be her attempt to be everything to everyone. As a result the album fails to live up to its title, for by the end of it you're left none the wiser when it comes to the identity of Jessie J.

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.

If you want to stretch your wings further, you need originality and you need not just bravado but actual courage--and Viva Brother's world is neither brave nor new.

The list of guest stars includes Jessie J, Robbie Williams and will.i.am, and the album is as overproduced as those names suggest. Worse still, on The Fifth Dizzee Rascal succumbs to the worst stereotypes of rap music.

Too many of these tracks sound like empty afterthoughts, or half-baked studio incarnations, needing more embellishment or maybe just a general reimagining.

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

Does You Inspire You has a few high points, most of them hidden in the quieter corners of the album. In its more strident moments, though, it's just plain puzzling.

Although it will undoubtedly be adored by Kasabian’s fiercely loyal army of fans, to the unconverted 48:13 sounds like a band running perilously low on ideas.

The potential is undoubtedly there, but Reptar's debut album suffers badly from the band's chaotic approach, as well as Ulicny's occasionally grating vocals.

This album is too much of a mess to be seen as a worthy follow-up to such a great debut.

As it is, Modern Blues is probably one for the fans only.

It is neither better nor any worse than The Logic Of Chance. But what is really telling is the lack of anything remotely resembling a standout track.

He has spectacularly failed to make an album that has any bite.

There are moments of brilliance, but it's bogged down by the kind of watery filler an older, more mature artist would have largely filtered out.

Perhaps if each song were half the length, the fun, easy-listening element to PBJ's music would be more clear-cut. As it is, Writer's Block proves a real struggle.

Their impression is clear, but the soul, and even the primary reason why this sort of music was great in the first place, is coldly removed. It makes for a slightly uncanny listen, like a collection of all the filler tracks from '88 twee.

Throughout the entire album, you’re left wondering how Smith, who is responsible for some of the most untouchable, spontaneous punk classics of all time, could muster the audacity to purposefully sound like such a parody of his previous self.

As a product that needs to sell it fits the bill perfectly - there are at least five potential top ten singles here--but as an album, the whole thing feels precision tooled, vacuum-packed and strangely lifeless.

There are some excellent tracks on the album but all in all this is a serious disappointment from a band of whom much more was expected.

The Prodigy are doing a lot of shoving, but little in the way of solving the problem they’ve identified. If they want to be considered as important as The Sex Pistols, they’ll have to do rather better than this.

Snark aside, it's a shame that aside from a couple of notable exceptions, the album title is just about right.

Gilmore has merely rendered Fever more American market-friendly and given it a strong flavor of stateside nu-metal. It's a pattern that is just too repetitious, too anodyne and just plain insipid.

Perhaps the global impact of the massive Call Me Maybe is what makes the album as a whole feel like a damp squib, but with or without US Marine parody videos, the rest of the album fizzles out into synth-pop oblivion.

The Great Escape Artist is the least cohesive of all Jane's Addiction's albums.

All too often Rudebox plays like an undeveloped collection of half-baked ideas.

In the context of a studio recording, Cage The Elephant's premiere isn't far off insufferable.

The trouble is that in the two years since Love Angel Music Baby she doesn't seem to have moved on or evolved at all.

There’s certainly a market for anodyne, unthreatening, middle of the road pop, and Blunt appeals to that market very successfully. Yet those who look for music to move them, be it through the feet, heart or brain, probably won’t be surprised to find that there won’t be too much to appeal to them here.

They haven't completely taken their eye off what made the Charlatans so successful in the first place, but the new sound is none too convincing.

They sound nice, look nice but you'd be pressed to find any substance.

In the final analysis, The Whip need to focus more on the dynamics of the dance floor and less on looking cool for the covers of inkies.

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

Kurt Vile: 50% Velvet Underground; 50% The Jesus And Mary Chain. Childish Prodigy: 50% Velvet Underground & Nico; 50% Darklands.

While Meighan’s Liam Gallagher-like machismo may not have been to everyone’s taste, his vocals undoubtedly had much more presence than Pizzorno’s rather bland voice, which does little more than carry the songs on Happenings along, and is indicative of a broader lack of musical personality combined with a lack of truly memorable songs.

There's too much that should have never seen the light of day, that is little more than a band riffing on ideas in the studio without ever taking them anywhere near consummation. But Down In Albion just about remains afloat because there are moments on it when Babyshambles make us care.

All The Plans is full of driving piano, anthemic guitar, and a bit of swagger. They owe a huge debt to Coldplay, Ocean Colour Scene, and Oasis which, in itself, must be quite galling.

She is far, far too good to be fronting songs which sound ‘current’ only in the sense that you can imagine them ending up on Rihanna‘s rejection pile.

Ripe is a disappointingly bland affair. None of the songs have any edge to them, the tunes are predictable and the lyrics are mundane.

What the two have come up with next is a new member and a sort of hillbilly Pixies for children, or perhaps a grunge starter kit for Polyphonic Spree fans.

Certainly there are some interesting moments on Music From The Spheres. But overall it’s the sound of Coldplay treading water. More alarmingly, it begins to sound like they’re trying not to drown.

Unfortunately Turn It Up, bar two brilliant singles, just doesn't stand up to repeat listens.

For those expecting the worst ahead of Bloc Party’s return, Hymns is likely to validate all their fears. Change may have been unavoidable after losing two influential members, but to change beyond recognition is almost an insult to the original band’s legacy.

While this isn't a bad album--and Manson diehards are likely to enjoy it quite a bit--there's the sense that it may be an unwanted one.

This album is only worthy of more than one star for provoking a reaction. That, at least, is better than being merely another dull shade of musical grey. But only marginally.

The Open Door is an exercise in how not to make a sophomore album (or any album for that matter).

If The Black Eyed Peas want to sing, dance and rap about having good nights and getting laid, that's fine; but expecting a discerning audience to buy this bottle-rocket crap as an album is pure delusion. If they're truly trying to achieve more, The Beginning is a pretty awful start.

They're not completely terrible. Their music won't damage your ears or insult you, it's just quite spectacularly dull.

There's little in the way of fire or grit here.

It's not all bad, but there's no getting away from the fact the main problem with this lifeless debut is Elkington's voice.

What a shame, then, that The Death Of Slim Shady (Coup De Grace) is such a regression in aesthetic, subject matter and quality, full of shock-value material that sounds painfully forced in 2024.

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.

Papa Roach have the tools to be a damn good rock band, but they'll never be one unless they change the bloody record.

It is impeccably produced and sheened, but it sounds polished to the extent of being soulless.

With half of rEVOLVEr emulating his older tracks and the other half making strained attempts to branch out into rap and dance, it appears that the rappa ternt sanga simply hasn't found anywhere else to turn.

Despite it taking four years to come out, pretty much all of the songs on Always Tomorrow are forgettable, and made up of riffs so basic and hooks so anonymous that you’ll probably end up wishing they’d have waited a little longer.

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

Pay The Devil is for Van Morrison completists only.

A lot of guest names (including Jon Hopkins, Little Simz and Ayra Starr) and songs with literally the worst lyrics you’re likely to hear this decade. Possibly most unforgivably, there are barely any memorable tunes either – which used to be Coldplay’s great strength.

Drowners is a fun little record, if you want to get all patronizing about it, but it’s difficult to get any further than that because of its staggering unoriginality.

Mature Themes is simple self-indulgence and that's rarely worth listening to.

To Lose My Life is an album made to a predefined plan with skill and no heart.

The lameness of the words would be forgivable if they were paired with music that provided any kind of pleasant distraction. But across Happy People’s 10 tracks, the band prove themselves incapable of writing a single decent hook.

Switzerland lacks any track with even a tenth of the standout potential of Danger! High Voltage. And it's a critical absence for Switzerland, because there's nothing on this record that makes you want to hear it a second time.

Unfortunately, all this really means is an extra emphasis on weirdly pitched keyboard riffs and slightly dated sounding beats.

The whole thing simply flat lines into mediocrity.

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 bits which 'aren't bad' are the bits which don't involve Ms Hilton.

You'll find more wit and invention on a solitary track by Ethan Kath and Alice Glass than you will on this depressingly retro and lumpen homage to a scene that wasn't even all that back in the day.

Clarke is a genuinely talented songwriter, if rather earnest in his intentions, but in Music for The People he and his mates seem to have lost the plot.

It truly is awful.

Hi-Tek's construction of techno beats and rave stabs on the quirky I Fink U Freeky and heavy brostep on opener Never Le Nkemise just add to the nauseating concoction of trash that comprises Ten$ion.

After a while, it grates badly on the nerves.

Green Day have become the very thing they once despised: buck-chasin’ mild boys of mayonnaise corporate rock.

Unless a couple more of these tracks manage to repeat the success of 'When I Grow Up' and stick on commercial radio, this is an album heading straight for the bargain bins.

When you're at Rihanna's level you can afford the best songwriters and producers in the business and sonically the album is generally far ahead of her peers. Yet if Sia's Diamonds is a sultry triumph, its character and uniqueness highlights the ultimately hollow pleasures of much around it.

So there are a couple of silly tracks - but then there were two silly Bennett sisters [in Austen's Pride and Prejudice]. Sadly, the remainder of the album is all Mary and no Elizabeth; devoid of life, wit, or energy.

For the most part, however, The Female Boss is a cynical and dire product which invites the riposte: Tulisa, you're fired.

Rather than offering reinterpretation, Malin sounds like an annoying guest at a house party, who despite all efforts to hide the guitar has found it and insists on playing a disparate bunch of songs much to the annoyance of everyone else, none of whom quite have the heart to tell him to stop.

Most of the album's remaining tracks are utterly vacuous interpretations of songs that few are likely to care much about. They offer nothing new to anyone or anything.

It's downright bad.

All in, it suffers from a lack of focus and direction.

Verve tracks such as Northern Soul and This Time were surprisingly successful attempts at funk. But the similar fusions attempted on United Nations Of Sound are so poorly executed that the album has to go down as a pompous, self-indulgent rock folly.

Petits Fours just has too many annoying bits about it to be good.