The result is an album that is, for the most part, merely pleasant.

At times it's hilarious, especially the song openings, which evoke poodle-rock heroes in mock affection, but the tracks then go somewhere inconceivably cool, twisting, shimmering and generally rocking in drool-worthy style.

As an exercise in not-so-subtle re-positioning the album is never less than effective and its high-points are more interesting and persuasive than most of JLS' peers.

Here, Pritchard and company aim for an even more mainstream success than Konk, and they will likely succeed in selling a boatload of albums. But they've lost something in the process.

The whole thing just feels so lightweight, as if the remaining members of CSS are struggling not to play their instruments but to get any magic out of them.

This then is an album that doesn't quite work, being as it is constantly in a state of conflict.

Christopher comes across as so eager to please that parts of the album lack vim where it’s needed, despite the luxuriant polish that’s been spread across all 10 songs.

The concept pays some dividends, with production that frequently finds a pleasant hybrid between gospel and contemporary production and subject matter that surprisingly doesn’t outstay its welcome. The big problem is Kanye’s lyrics, which have lost a lot of the charm they had in the early years without improving in technique, and at various points the tracks have a big hole where a genuinely powerful verse should be. Nonetheless, Jesus Is King is certainly an improvement on Ye, and a purposeful if novel release.

Although he may never touch the glory days of his heyday again, there are enough glimpses of his genius gathered here to satisfy.

For someone who has a lot to say and is such a unique figure in music, it's a disappointment that Light isn't as captivating as it should be.

At its best, this album is nothing more than a passable appropriation of pop reggae in 2013.

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

While Angels & Airwaves are pretty good, don't pick up We Don't Have To Whisper expecting a revolutionary sound designed to shatter your worldview and change your life. On the other hand, if you want something to fill the gap while U2 are recording are their new album, look no further.

This is a rather catchy, rather clever slice of electronica that you could easily find yourself falling in love with. It is also the kind of album that you could hate yourself for buying because you get off on the kind of tunes the Tweenies find annoying.

Unfortunately Night Visions is so safe and middle of the road that it leaves you with the same hollow feeling that Las Vegas can, without the dizzying high and sensual assault that got you there in the first place.

Though this isn’t a complete comeback, frustrated Kanye fans certainly have more grounds for optimism after this record than they did before it.

Aside from the album not standing out from the competition the individual tracks have trouble standing out from each other.

An energetic ride with plenty of musical thrills and spills which will sound a treat live, on the road or in the club, but one which doesn't fully convince when the vocals are added to the mix.

It's unclear whether Pop Etc have branded themselves as an out and out dance pop band, or if they remain an alternative, slightly niche group, masquerading as a clichéd pop group.

I Cry When I Laugh never really manages to become more than just a collection of singles.

The Balcony may not have the presence of a Definitely Maybe or an Is This It, but it’s certainly a solid step in the right direction.

His voice sounds better than ever, and while nothing here recaptures the glory years of The Verve, his songs are more focused than ever before.

Just when you think the album is sinking into mediocrity, Borrell and company respond with two of the best tracks they have ever put their names to.

Ultimately it's hard to see this matching the levels of their early success.

It's not an album that will change your life, but its airy grooves make for perfectly pleasant listening for under an hour. And sometimes, that's all you need.

If New Glow is anything to go by, the creative well seems to be starting to run dry.

Foxx's music and range of vocal techniques are not unique, but perhaps this added touch of genuine, heartfelt realism is what will see the actor make a successful jump into the music industry.

At its best it's a wonderful homage, at its worst it's a vanity project.

Easily HIM's most accessible album to date.

The band's experimental side (the side that made them good) has suffered, as if "Wires" was the new blueprint on how to write successful songs.

The 10 tracks that make up Tales Don't Tell Themselves brief-though-engaging narrative are deeper, more accessible offerings that need those vital extra two or three listens to really sink in.

Whereas their first album hit the mark perfectly, The Pick of Destiny swings wildly and misses.

There are numerous highlights on Coming Up For Air to ensure success in sales and chart placings and that is, of course, the dream for any aspiring act: fame and fortune. But it comes at a cost as the charm and character of their early guise is being tempered.

It’s another long album – if there’s one conclusion to be drawn from this record, it’s that Justin Timberlake desperately needs an editor – but it’s a return to the slinky RnB pop that made his name. The problem is that there’s not much of the sparkle that was evident about 20 years ago.

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.

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.

There is much to admire here, and much to cherish.

Devlin’s talents as both lyricist and rapper are never in doubt, but for all the album’s pomposity and scale, musically speaking, it feels like a big step backward.

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.

These People is a mixture of epic ballads harking back to the sound of the Verve and attempts to move forward with rather half-hearted electronic pop. Despite some beautiful moments, Ashcroft seems to have fallen into the gap between the two.

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.

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

There are one or two new ventures into the unknown, but by and large, The Pigeon Detectives haven't made enough progression from Emergency.

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.

The old master may not be as abundantly creative as he once was but there’s life in the old fart yet.

While it may not be enough to garner any new fans, existing devotees will feel that the wait has been worth it.

The rest of the 13 track album sounds like a mix of Latvian Eurovision Song Contest entries and The X-Factor winners' songs; an unmistakable, cringey 'life affirming' theme runs throughout, with the obligatory twinkling electro loops.

It's downright bad.

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.

When Various Cruelties gets just the right balance, the sound is beautiful to listen to, and would be perfect for soundtrack for summer.

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.

Flashes here and there suggest that The Neighbourhood are capable of writing good pop music. It’s just that they miss the target far too much.

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

Sex Dreams And Denim Jeans is catchy, fresh-sounding and brilliantly self-referential, with an attitude a million miles removed from a major label star pretending to be like, totally, OMG, mental.

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.

While the album is far from musically innovative, to cite it as an entirely unrewarding and joyless listen would be hyper-critical and plain wrong.

Overall there's just too much bland corporate sludge rock here to make any geniune lasting impression.

There’s not enough quality across the whole of Evolve to convincingly make the case that Imagine Dragons actually have, or to attract an audience of new listeners. Evolve is a good idea, but in practise it turns out that it doesn’t really work.

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.

His attempts to be emotive or inspirational sound just wrong.

With Everybody Wants To Be On TV, they've given those masses what they want. But there's nothing for the discerning music fan.

Wired Together is a patchwork of half-finished schemes - loud enough to give you a headache, bland enough to stop you thinking - that pales next to its genre contemporaries and seems to aspire to little more than making a trendy noise.

Where it hits the mark, One Of The Boys is sparky and accomplished--though entirely disposable--pop.

As their sound comes into focus again, and their inflence is found to be more powerful than we first thought, there are mixed feelings on this latest Stereo MCs offering.

As real big-bucks contenders, Kodaline aren’t quite there yet. But as a debut, In A Perfect World manages to find its feet with ease.

Regardless of how good the voice is, if the music does not follow suit then there's only so far you can get.

This is, after all, the sound of Paul Smith freed of his band and label obligations - but the fact remains that Margins, while an interesting insight into a character, is a frustratingly hit-and-miss affair.

The music is happy and content, the sound of both success and the comfort of being established enough to make an album entirely for yourself.

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.

The album has undoubtedly been an opus of dedication but essentially there is no spontaneity.

Merging the sounds of space rock with an element of trance and a smattering of early Velvet Underground experimentation, the group ends up with an enticing album that holds a fresh mix of sounds.

It’s nice enough. That’s the problem with Snake Oil, though: the highest bar the music reaches is being decent, and the loftiest ambition of these songs is to be simply tolerated, packed in amongst other unremarkable tunes on an Apple Music playlist called ‘Tuesday Vibes’ or something similar.

For an enjoyable 'kickaround' of an album this is a cheeky little blighter that will continue to tickle ears, raise a smile and brighten any listen for a while yet.

Sadly, expert guitar playing cannot carry an album. Moreover, it is too sterile and obsessively arranged, and the majority of the vocals lack that rock fierceness. Everyone is playing it too safe, with the production geared towards something mainstream and pop-oriented rather than experimentation and reinterpretation.

There’s talent here, although it’s often buried deep beneath generic beats and lyrical self-obsession that eventually becomes a bit exhausting to listen to.

When Blunt sticks to playing it safe, he offends the least. And whilst it seems contrived to applaud an artist for sticking to his zone, this man is an exceptional case.

Maximum Entropy is the somewhat frustrating work of a band with potential in need of some fine tuning.

Sure, nostalgia abounds (albeit with a bit more modern sheen), but The Bishops have, in a terrible way, outdone themselves in their songwriting, and have given new meaning to the term 'autopilot'.

Perhaps it's a problem with sequencing, as no doubt some of the acoustically driven material that The Vines compose is glorious, but it always sits difficultly alongside the heavier, angrier stuff that they are better at writing, and more at home playing. It's a problem that has manifested itself on every album, and is more than evident on Melodia.

The emphasis with Generation seems to be on cramming in as many styles as possible. This gets tediously close to "look I'm a DJ, watch what I can play," rendering listening the first few times a nauseating experience.

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.

This is a startling new direction, and while not entirely successful, it confirms Cornell as a vocalist of versatility and strength.

If plodding indie-by-numbers with the odd nice tune thrown in is your bag, jump right in. Those seeking a bit more invention may care to look elsewhere.

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

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.

(ONe) is decidedly safe and anything but experimental.

Fortune is the kind of record that will please Brown's many deluded female fans, but we cannot with good conscience give it a single star.

This is flat, formulaic and forgettable.

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

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.

Neontwang is a successful comeback from a band that have been written off more times than they would care to remember.

While this is a solid effort--and a more solid one than anything they’ve put together before--it’s not likely to set the world, or the charts, on fire.