It might lack the raw appeal of Kendrick's 2011 mixtape 'Section.80', but it's also a big-budget reminder that the 25-year-old hasn't forgotten his roots.

Though this is her most creative record to date, the lyrics stick to safer territory.

Bad As Me has to rank as a disappointment, since there are no surprises to match Real Gone's sepulchral funk or Orphans'... breathtaking sweep.

It’s a well-crafted debut from a worthy new artist, but it’s competent rather than compelling.

By trading nonsensical time signatures and atonal bursts for fluidity and stadium rock, they've subtracted from their former wretchedness.

It's not, as has been signalled, Super Furries' best album. It's their worst. That's still aeons better than most other left-of-centre alternative British pop bands, but it's nonetheless a disappointment.

Within the chaos, there’s beauty — the sensitivity of ‘Hey Jane’, the infectious hip-hop bite of ‘Thought I Was Dead’, the rising cacophonies of brass and percussion on ‘I Killed You’. But perhaps a less frantic approach would’ve benefited the listen overall.

They peddle the same sort of fake-rustic rootsiness that seems to be colonising our era: all these flatpack off-the-peg dreams of Ruritania that iPad-stashing mid-lifes have taken up as a counterpoint to their rabid technophilia.

Inevitably, when the Prozac finally wears off the more 'thoughtful' numbers fall flat on their faces. [20 Aug 2005, p.58]

This is Yo La tengo on snug autopilot. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]

Viewed in isolation, ‘Heaven’ is a pretty sublime pop-punk record. Its little brother, ‘Hell’, yields more mixed results, continuing the metal-infused sound Sum 41 have veered towards in recent years.

A naggingly problematic record, with a void at its heart that no amount of cool celebrity mates can quite conceal.

Without visuals to add a knowing wink and a flourish of pop absurdity, it sometimes settles into a comfortable groove of trap-influenced drum beats, moody instrumentals, Frank Ocean-y electric guitars and percussive brass peals. Rarely deviating from earnestness, this is at odds with the absurd brilliance of his defining moments thus far.

It's a set of two halves whose hands won't hold.

Ire Works is their most controlled effort to date, even more so than 2004's mainstream-friendly (relatively speaking, of course) "Miss Machine."

Sometimes you wish Meloy would just put away his studied thesp-schlock and say, "Man, I'm sick of singing about Victorian peasants. I got dumped once. I want to write about that..." [27 Jan 2007, p.31]

Japandroids know how to bring the ruckus. But elsewhere the power-chord pummelage gets a bit one-note.

There are far too many children’s voices, snatches of birdsong, glissandi of saccharine strings, and always the half-heard, half-sensed thwack of Frisbee upon social media manager.

‘As The Love Continues’ is an album that opens impressively but falls short at times during its second half.

The result is a soothing, slow-burning collection which reflects on times and friends gone by.

Even if ‘Painless’ occasionally settles into a consistent, thudding groove at times, when Yanya goes full pelt, she’s at her very best.

‘Let the Lord Sort ’Em Out’ isn’t a total misfire: it’s composed, thoughtful and often impressively lyrically detailed. But after 16 years, Clipse didn’t come back knocking down doors and shocking the world.

SVIIB is a fitting eulogy for a musician and a band ever connected with both.

‘A Written Testimony’ is a 39-minute, 10-track project that offers all the usual Jay Electronica tropes: complex rhyming patterns, double and triple entendre, lyrics across various languages laid over psychedelic production with minimal drums. Electronica excels on a technical level throughout. Yet, while this is the most anyone has heard from him musically in over a decade, there’s a sense of reticence throughout the LP.

If you've ever wondered what growing up in middle-class 1970s America would have been like, these deeply personal revelations are for you. [30 Apr 2005, p.64]

It may not be the most exciting project to be released by the singer, but it’s complexity and composition make for a perfect power-down playlist.

You leave American Gangster longing for more of this don't-give-a-fuck attitude, but the feeling that presides is Jay-Z patting his wallet.

The result is a thoroughly modern pop album that will best appeal to ageing clubbers.

It’s good to hear Sprints develop on ‘All That Is Over’, but to do so without extinguishing that fire is the fine line they walk.

Their third album totaling 75 minutes and spread, slightly unnecessarily, over two CDs, it reaches unexpected new heights in the pantheon of 'metal bands who mellowed out'.

The style is cool, the moves perfect, but you can take as much of lasting value from a stick of gum as you can from these dank-basement stomps.

Some of the album’s charms only emerge when you search hard for them, as on the disjointed gloom of ‘The Light In Your Name’ or the dankness of ‘Spiral’, and there are a few ponderous cold spots.

It's all wildly self-indulgent, but pleasant enough.

Cornershop’s cult is one you’ve either already signed over your seventh-born to or will watch pass you by with a fascinated bemusement.

Easy Pain proves hard to like; and with little more than aimless aggression to cling onto for eight songs, you realise it’s all muscle.

It’s another tension that helps to define ‘Girl With Fish’ — a sense that nothing holds so much weight that it can’t be taken elsewhere in the next moment. While that idea perhaps keeps these songs from being as memorable as they could be, it does occasionally work, shaping the album into a really nice cut of slacker-noise.

Over length of 12 tracks, the soul/G-funk stuff becomes a little one-note, while the Disney-fied material lacks the charm that makes Prass such an engaging, idiosyncratic performer.

This is a folk-gospel tribute album with harmony and backing vocals so powerful you'd think it was the population of New Jersey marching in Technicolor over the grey, polluted Hudson singing along. [22 Apr 2006, p.39]

It's music for downhearted cattle rustlers to mournfully skin steers to. [9 Apr 2005, p.58]

It doesn’t always work, not least in ‘Shotgun’’s iffy mix of Nashville-ready instrumentals and a chugging house beat. On the flipside, ‘Do I Have To Talk You Into It’ sticks so stubbornly to the Spoon template it could be a discarded number from any of their previous records.

Overall, SY fail to get into their groove between twisted, brutalised melody and spastic six-string experimentalism.

There's two sides to Nedry. One is given to taking faintly voguish reference points, lopping off the sharp edges and smoothing out the kinks. It's pretty, but weirdly bloodless....The other is less polite....Message to the band: ignore your nicer side in future.

This LP could have injected some creativity back into 4/4, instead it settles for quaintness.

Had the stronger songs been contained to an EP it could well have rivalled the extraordinary consistency and thrill of its predecessor – but frustratingly, it falls short.

If Christopher Nolan ever does one of his gritty makeovers on Twilight, the soundtrack’s as good as sewn up.

It’s uneven, with flashes of brilliance. Blood is a record that builds slow and steady, as it continually keeps you on your toes with its experimental and exploratory nature.

‘Volcano’ certainly isn’t overstuffed with ideas. Often, the uniformity in this approach – muddy vocal line that could be a chopped-up classic, and a minimal but effective bassline – mean that several of the songs meld together, struggling to stand out. .... But when they get it right, it’s hard to deny how hard it hits.

If there’s a criticism of Broken Politics, it perhaps that the record doesn’t broadcast this voice often enough.

True Meanings tends to blend into a lilting mush over the course of 14 tracks that rarely stray from the beige end of the sonic palette.

Justice? Talent to spare, but that doesn't stop '†' being just another frustrating dance music album.

The result is an intriguing, if disorientating, sprawl of sound.

Resembles the Arcade Fire if they were from the Renaissance era and rubbish. [23 Jul 2005, p.50]

The more experimental side of the record is where things get really challenging.

There are a few moments of elegant sensuality--like the tumbling, androgynous voices of 'He She'--but by and large it's like one of Jeff Koons' uber-kitsch sculptures: gleaming, opulent, but kinda hard to love.

'The Private Press' isn't a remarkable record - it lacks that startling and instinctive excitement capable of pushing music into the realm of the era-defining.

Ultimately Blake isn't yet the singer-songwriter to pull this album off.

The little dude is a poet. Still, at a relatively lean 30 minutes, it’s hard to argue this is a heavyweight album.

Ultimately, this is tinkering around the edges of a formula rather than a bold stylistic shift--and while this makes Kannon an easy disc to recommend to newcomers, ultimately it goes nowhere SunnO))) haven’t gone before.

The Money Store offers a glimpse of sonic dystopia that's utterly convincing.

Smith’s made the grade on this serviceable first record Lost & Found, and the path to her becoming Britain’s next global export is looking pretty clear. If only it was made to feel less of a drag.

Even more subdued than usual. [12 Aug 2006, p.32]

There’s no suppressing the fact that, ironically, in loosening up and stretching their wings they’ve become a little more earthbound. Where once they conjured up the sound of, um, glaciers drifting across the surface of the moon, occasionally here it lapses into the sound of a wheelie bin being dragged across HMV’s backyard.

Disappointing, then, that the eight-track ‘bonus disc’ opens with a cover of a cover: a lo-fi version of ‘Valerie’. [Review of Deluxe Edition]

Easy to admire, but hard to really love. [27 May 2006, p.31]

Unlike Cash, the ego on display here still sounds like it's got the whip hand on the talent and you never really start to like him. [4 Mar 2006, p.31]

It’s not necessarily trying to be clever – more that the sheer weight of its many ideas crushes the more visceral response that its obvious instrumental swagger demands from its listener.

Though less immediate than debut "Marry Me," Actor is full of charm, picking its way through disorienting rhythm changes and peculiar progressions.

This formulaic approach lacks surprise – once you’re a few tracks in, you’ve heard it all. It might not be a total hot Gizz summer, but at least we’ve got a few extra bangers to bask in.

The results are varied, but this is just one frame of a much bigger picture of Jin’s solo career – one where he will undoubtedly continue to grow and prosper the more he leans into what suits him best.

This is more entirely predictably absurd bludgeoning death metal silliness from the kings of its kind.

It is, however, undoubtedly a collection of many good songs. From start to finish, it’s a relentlessly difficult listen, and one that suffers from little in the way of dynamics or variety of tone.

Their stark sound might not be for everyone, but Williamson’s sideways swipes at pop culture and his own big nights out are as hypnotic as Fearn’s punked-up electronica which, despite its simplicity, is nigh impossible not to move to.

It's like Scissor Sisters on tranquilisers. With a bit of ELO. And a dash of Ramones. And, with this eclecticism, a worrying lack of focus. [5 Jun 2004, p.57]

Other than the fantastically chaotic "Watcher, Tell Us Of The Night" ushering in a rallying final quarter, it makes for a frustratingly unfocused listen from a fine artist lost in his own magnificent noises.

‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’ is never quite an album that is completely comforting or despairing. Instead, it explores the vast reaches between the two and uses introspection as a means of finding stability in the chaos.

In truth, the majority of this largely monotonous second outing becomes a one-size-fits-all affair, and you’re left digging around in this hallucinogenic haze for a new high.

Creosote’s first album since doesn’t have quite the same woozy charm, trading the lush and eerie textures for gentler, more traditional ditties, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still pleasures to be plundered.

Quarantine is less concerned with the tropes of olde world dance music, more fixated on gloopy post-club ambience.

In some ways ‘Traditional Tools’ is a welcome return to form, but the album isn’t nearly as innovative or as introspective as it makes itself out to be.

There’s a playfulness in the way Gojira approach ‘Fortitude’. There are bursts of melody across the album – perfect for a stadium show of their own – and the likes of ‘New Found’ and ‘Born For One Thing’ flirt with crushing industrial breakdowns. There’s even a couple of soaring guitar solos in ‘Hold On’. The whole record feels agile, despite the weight.

At times, it’s truly gorgeous; but at others: it’s bloody hard work.

Band Of Joy is an essential purchase... if your dad is having a birthday this month.

That’s Your Lot isn’t the instant-classic debut they might have hoped for, but it delivers on their early promise, and offers tantalising hints at where they might go from here.

[The lyrics] can also be so formulaic that you’ll almost wonder whether you’re listening to M3GAN. ... But at the same time, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Max has fully understood the assignment. ‘Diamonds & Dancefloors’ lives up to its escapist title with a non-stop onslaught of sharp and shiny pop hooks.

It takes a while to work out what an absolute waste of 21-year-old Londoner Naomi McLean-Daley's incredible talents this album is.

Full of sombre, skeletal and obliquely confessional songs, it's a crafted collection with ruminations on sex and loss. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.

It breaks very little new ground--which does have the upside of the songs sounding catchy because you feel like you've heard it all before.

Psychedelic craziness. [30 Apr 2005, p.64]

Does nothing wrong but could do with a bit of meat. [13 Aug 2005, p.58]

Uneasy and scratchy, and powered by hefty beats from producer Justin Raisen, ‘No Home Record’ is a restless listen.

It may lack the immediacy of 2018’s hookier ‘Remind Me Tomorrow’, but this unyielding record is, at times, a powerful reckoning with the age of uncertainty.

A saddening case of brick production, paper soul--here the Quins are little more than twin airbags.

If you like your rap homespun, rich, physical and all 'summer-in-NYC '95', it's a dream. But considering he once reinvented the genre, it's disappointingly reactionary.

Occasionally. the jaunty positivity treads too far into Edward Sharpe territory and all you’re left craving is a healthy slice of cynicism.

The result is an often thrilling, semi-symphonic ode to joy that peaks with ‘The Plans We Made’, a lilting trip-hop nursery rhyme on which Chapman sighs through the line “there’s only so much I can do” like a man who’s suffered a thousand defeats and still maintains his optimism.

He’s managed to morph his frustrations of the world into engaging and frantic material that packs serious spirit. Yet another album we’ll have to wait to see live.

It finds the band cruising along the middle of the road, with occasional interesting detours.