Even the very best double albums--London Calling, The White Album, Tusk – have their lulls, but this record has too many.

This is an album which feels like it was made quickly, not because of artists reaching a terminal velocity of creativity, but to take maximum advantage of an audience who may not be there this time next year.

Erratic songwriting is evident from start to finish on the record.

This is an LP that promised much but ultimately it's a puzzling affair.

So far, so deliriously cheesy. Unfortunately, the remainder of The Beat Is... lacks any sparkle or panache, with the band falling foul of a very current musical disease; the Auto-Tune obsession.

There simply isn’t enough variation, with the overwhelming presence of Righton’s one dimensional vocals lacking allure after a few tracks and the invariable electronica also doing little to excite or surprise.

Occasionally, songs like Like A God and the fiery Double Dare do recall the band’s old magic, but those moments are few and far between.

The Melodic’s busy, busy style just doesn’t work with non-dynamic mixing. And the album can hurt the ears to the point of irritation.

His verses mostly feel redundant, hastily thrown together to validate the presence of these songs on his project, and while the album has been described as introspective this very brief release only allows for skindeep thoughts on any one topic. The Kanye West show has already rolled on, but some of the magic of yesteryear has been left behind.

They may have been away for a while, but ADULT. remain as frustratingly unloveable as ever.

Rihanna's latest collection Loud is another sure fire assault on the charts and airwaves. It highlights exactly the best and worst of today's pop aesthetic.

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.

The standard of the songs never rises above the mildly pleasant, and occasionally - as on the self-consciously 'widescreen' title track or the wetter-than-a-fish's-wet-bits Mother Nature Goes To Heaven - it's pat and drab.

Most of the other tracks on the LP aren’t nearly as exciting to hear as the first two singles.

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.

Danse Macabre becomes a career retrospective of sorts, earning credit by not going down the obvious ‘best of’ route. However, to work it needs the different elements to complement each other, and on that score its success is extremely limited.

Save Rock And Roll is not only Fall Out Boy’s softest album yet, it is also their least memorable.

This is very much a fans only album, much like Missy's other efforts.

As such, the experimentations, and their hit-and-miss nature, doesn't make for an album you want to play over and over again; in fact, a fair amount of tunes are rather forgettable and don't really offer much.

Much of, if not all of What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? suffers from a complete lack of intelligence, candidness or originality: elements that help make guitar-based music interesting.

As good as it occasionally gets on I Hear You, the continuously tuneless wail of the vocals are likely to be where the record either succeeds or fails, depending on how much emphasis the listener puts on the vocal element and whether or not they can see past the often painful experience. If only Mr Birdsong had been given lead vocal duties instead.

There are a number of misfires, and no amount of positivity can hide them.

At 46 minutes, Recurring Dream isn’t an especially long album. But on the wrong day, at the wrong time and in the wrong frame of mind, it can feel like the longest 46 minutes in the history of all time.

Hobba’s songwriting is simply not up to par: melody, lyric, and arrangement come off like caricatures of their desired styles; it seems often that in an attempt to replicate the feel of a classic rock song, all of the fun is lost.

Tom DeLonge does have talent, and maybe one day he'll make an album that deserves all his self-proclaimed hype. This, however, isn't it.

Plodding rhythms predominate and there's a prevalent sense of nostalgia that sometimes threatens to become a little syrupy, not least because of the numerous cliches about highways or the open road.

Most of the time, it's run-of-the mill soft rock.

It’s atmospheric, after a fashion, but it feels overproduced and it’s often physically difficult to listen to.