Through this, In Plain Sight has a frustrating tendency to lean on cliché; there’s a nagging feeling of déjà vu in listening to a record that has been made thousands of times before.

A pleasant listen, but it's hardly fresh.

Honesty is often lost in overproduction, both in the music and in his lyricism. It is listenable, summery and occasionally thought-provoking, but tired in its laboured pushes for emotional sincerity.

Occasionally they hit an addictive groove, but you'd hope so given that the songs are each five to 10 minutes long. Messy, and not in the good way.

Ant's famous sartorial attention to detail doesn't extend to the music here, as experimentalism meanders into the bizarre and unlistenable.

Many of the songs deal in wavy synths and trap beats, but a few tracks show an appetite for experimentation that reflects poorly on the rest of the album.

With only three 'songs' to speak of here, 'All Watched Over...' smacks of another great British songwriter having their melodic nous chewed away by electro-moths. [7 Aug 2004, p.49]

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.

Even at best, though, something rings false about Better Than Heavy. It never sounds like a self-funded album made by angry people.

It’s only on the closing ‘Money Money’ that he sounds like any sort of rebel at all, upping the pace dramatically for a chunk of smoke-spewing Motörhead ‘battle rock’, railing against the seditious lure of materialism.

Completely lacking in imagination. [1 Oct 2005, p.47]

It’s all so methodically planned that even standout radio-wave surfer ‘Take Back The City’ and producer Jacknife Lee struggle to stamp fresh life into this mega-selling formula.

Athlete's lyrical content is shockingly mundane.

The lyrics, too, reek of a lack of inspiration.

Their preoccupation with '70s British metal finds them wandering dangerously into gobilin-and-ghouls prog-rock territory. [5 Jun 2004, p.54]

An album that not only fudges golden opportunities, but finds this band's whole modus operandi laid embarrassingly bare. [15 Jan 2005, p.42]

With their crashing guitar riffs and vague, faux-poetic proclamations, Lost Under Heaven sound more like Imagine Dragons with a Goldsmiths degree.

'The Sound of Silence', the Simon & Garfunkel cover, is easily the best song on the record, despite Draiman singing his parts like he’s The Count from Sesame Street.

The man who made the 's 'Dare'--can't add enough bells and whistles to stop the tunes from sounding like they've been faxed over from one of Stock & Aitken's duller days at the office.

Labrinth may work wonders in the background, but he's far too anonymous on Electronic Earth to mark his card as much of a solo star.

Sure, it’s worth making the effort if you’re already a Segall Stan or a White Fence mega fan, but beyond that? There’s little here to latch onto that’ll make your stay worthwhile.

Too gloopily uniform. [16 Jul 2005, p.50]

Unfortunately, as a musical portrayal of the long-lasting echoes of WWI, its ideas are far more interesting than their execution.

However much he hollers, Dave McCabe can’t escape sounding bored, and his often-schoolboy lyrics have begun to actively jar.

A hundred miles off, and they might as well be a thousand. [16 Sep 2006, p.37]

Over-produced and under-inspired. [26 Mar 2005, p.51]

The Mountain Will Fall sounds, at best, like a decent mixtape made by someone with pretty good taste. Thing is, you can probably make one of those yourself.

In their relentless slavery to the groove, the songs fall hopelessly flat. [12 Feb 2005, p.51]

It sounds like Aerosmith, with plenty of hard-rocking blues swagger and lighters-aloft balladry, but most of the tunes are rubbish.

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

Sadly, the Norwegians promptly undo much of their good work by interspersing the bombastic rocking with acoustic cobblers like ‘Lovescared’ and the sort of excessive, pompous emoting that even Pearl Jam tend to avoid these days.

When he emerged from his stupor, he announced that he was giving up rap to make a guitar album. Which brings us to ‘Rebirth’, a shlock-rock record so absurd it makes Alien Ant Farm seem like a legitimate musical venture.

And it sounds... bloated and uncomfortable. Time for another re-think.

Ultimately, Glow will live or die on the strength of its singles. On this evidence, Tensnake seems to be missing that key part of his blueprint.

Amusingly, Los Angeles nu-metal types Orgy look like Duran Duran after being chewed on by giant robots. The problem is, as this hugely stupid sci-fi concept album grinds on towards the 30th century, they sound that way, too.

Half great and half pointless.

A muddled album that claims to love pop, but seems thoroughly averse to having any kind of fun.

[Danger Mouse's] electronics in ‘Lucid’ detract from the caper and the sub-Lily Allen skank of ‘Jelly Belly’ is ill-advised, while ‘The Running Goblin’’s harpsichord mires it in a midden of shtick.

[It] doesn't really sound like Prince at all. [25 Mar 2006, p.35]

Her debut had some killer pop singles like 'Black Horse And The Cherry Tree', but on Drastic Fantastic her talent and quirks have been mostly hidden under a gloss of studio production and bland AOR.

It quickly grows dreary when there’s not a knowing smirk to match the intensity.

On the whole, this is a mixed bag. ‘LP1’ shows a more grown-up side to the former One Direction member, and cherry-picks from pretty much every genre that’s in vogue right now. The problem is that it doesn’t tell us much about Liam Payne.

Overall, U2 have built a stadium rock cruise liner they’ve zero interest in rocking, and Experience is 50 minutes of very plain sailing indeed.

This barrage of generalised morality is cozened by overwrought production that sees the sun-baked reggae backbone of his previous efforts stripped out to make way for a confusing hotch-potch of styles and an overwhelming sense of desperation.

Combin[es] the chummy West Coast country pop of The Thrills with the plink-plonk pub piano philosophising of Embrace. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

Sticking to the formula followed by fellow Welsh emo posers Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend, the generic metalcore verses and overblown choruses are all present and correct.

Their problem? Others have overtaken them. [17 Jun 2006, p.39]

Sadly, it seems that with 'Audioslave' these people who were involved in some very exciting rock records in the 1990s, now seem happy to be making some bad ones from the 1970s.

Benjamin Power, on his first record as Blanck Mass, isn't really breaking their spacey, rushing mould, instead slowing it down and ironing out the thrills.

A record that sometimes hits the target but rarely leaves a lasting impression.

This isn’t a country album at all; rather it’s an excuse for Diplo to wear some razzle-dazzle Nudie Cohn-style suits and fancy cowboy hats.

Listening to 'Blue' is like meeting your first girlfriend ten years on, and realising that the things you fell in love [with] are long gone. [19 Jun 2004, p.56]

The record peaks with its first two songs.... The rest is Condon shirking off the grandeur of his earlier arrangements with his simplest songs yet, but without showing he’s got the songwriting chops to move on.

File under: ‘shoulda put a donk on it’.

More often than not Origins falls flat, with insipid choruses and melodramatic refrains. Big, bold and a little bit naff, this is another bread and butter album from a mindbogglingly huge group.

Although Cruz’s downfall comes when he acts the player (‘Break Your Heart’, ‘Dirty Picture’), it’s obvious his real talent comes when he exchanges vocal manipulation for balladeering as on ‘Falling In Love’, and disregards romantic cynicism for a rather hopeful ‘The 11th Hour’.

The more this album wears on, the more it feels a world away from the band who once grabbed attention with that charming and vibrant 2003 album. ‘Lovers Rock’ features moments that will satisfy those who’ve stuck by the band this far, but it ultimately feels like The Dears are running out of gas.

File this under 'disappointing'.

They appear to be sincere in their sloganeering so you’ve got to admire them, but, really, the message of a song like ‘New Orleans’ gets seriously undermined by the shiny Busted balloon it’s caught inside.

This album was their biggest and best opportunity to change that perception, but no matter how many freight-loads it ends up selling by, it hasn't succeeded.

They've stuck the bleeps on autopilot, the beats on cruise control, and can only be bothered writing a handful of half-decent tunes. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

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

There ain't too much here that's going to add to her legacy. Rather, there's the unmistakable sense of someone treading water, with even the OK bits here sounding uninspired.

Problem is, there's a dearth of ideas here that means the whole shebang clings to cloying, torturously repetitive pastiche rather than doing anything particularly innovative.

Placebo have been plumbing the same vein for so long, they've slipped into self-parody and come out the other side with their lipstick all smudged.

Faux-feminist tracks such as 'Dirty Mind' are more Austin Powers than Phil Spector, too self-conscious to hit the heart-bursting heights of the originals, too much a pastiche to forge anything new. [15 Jul 2006, p.37]

The band now find themselves caught between soft rock and a very hard-to-love place indeed.

It would be alright if they believed this stuff, but it's all done with the detached sneer beloved of hipsters worldwide. They're faux-hippies, not real ones.

It all ends not with a bang, but a shrug.

The first disc here was made with several different collaborators certainly doesn't lend cohesion.

For the most part, the album is sickly sweet and filled with cliché lyrics. ‘Treat Myself’ is a frustrating listen, especially given Trainor’s track record for writing ear-worm pop songs.

There's 100 reasons to worship the Beastie Boys. But, plugging in a wah-wah pedal and writing an album of indulgent jazz-funk instrumentals is certainly not one of them.

For the most part, this album, with its Avatar references (‘Lost Freestyle’) and hilariously bad Kim Jong Un punchlines (from ‘Tanasia’: “Chillin, we’re starting to think about children / And bringing them in the world with Kim Jong Illin'”), just sounds dated and like something Nas didn’t need to release.

Laura Marin and Quinn Luke cram excessive lyrics into songs such as 'Shake', creating stodge instead of sleekness.

Welcome To The Walk Alone may have the skeletal blueprint of pop genius running through it like words in a stick of rock but it verges on insulting.

The sort of glossy folk-pop that makes you want to usher Alice down the rabbit hole, and roll out the cement mixer. [10 Jun 2006, p.41]

In music, there are few things more tiresome than an artist obsessed with the idea of authenticity – they usually forget how to have fun. And this is a trap that Rag’N’Bone Man’s second album ‘Life in Misadventure’ falls straight into.

That it isn’t resoundingly terrible (as background music it’s passable, as long as you can’t actually hear it properly) is due to its general beigeness rather than the sparse flashes that illuminate it.

If Sidewalks is husband-and-wife duo Matt and Kim's vision of a perfect night on the tiles, then partying with them must be hellish.

The Saturday Night Live trio pick up where they left off with 2009's Incredibad.

Mostly, Paracosm is Chromatics if their nocturnal danger was replaced by nocturnal emissions, or Beach House if they got so stoned they forgot to change chords for minutes at a time.

III largely eschews fuzz but has plenty of rough edges.

Even a late appearance from The Weeknd can't save this omni-tonal snoozefest.

The 12-song album’s first five tracks are passable, if not actually quite enjoyable. Beyond this point, though, only the most hardened Moz fan should dare to venture. ‘The Girl From Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel’ is an unbearable cha-cha-cha; ‘Who Will Protect Us From The Police?’ is lumpen electro; and least listenable track ‘Israel’ sees him deliver political polemic via the dubious medium of a piano ballad.

The deft Tom Petty chug of ‘Indian Summer’ is anthemic enough, but there’s little else to get excited about.

The Panic Channel... never quite click. [9 Sep 2006, p.37]

Like their too-cool-for-school foremothers, they kind of miss the point of what Italo is about. Unlike them, however, over 10 tracks, they can’t even muster one bleedin’ catchy choon.

‘Get Sexy’ sounds like a lazy, latter-day Timbaland joint, and ‘About A Girl’ is a slice of future-house from Lady Gaga’s chum RedOne. But time was we could expect more than bland consistency from the Sugababes--shame.

‘Vultures 1’ might not be the total dud that could put Kanye’s career six feet under, but it is far from one of his best efforts either. It’s more cohesive than ‘Donda’ – although that’s not hard, given it’s about half its length – and includes some well-curated guest spots from Travis Scott, Playboi Carti and India Love.

It’s Hall & Oates without the casual genius; Boy Crisis without the chutzpah; Junior Boys without the emotional baggage.

As ever, he relies too much on accident to achieve interesting textures, flavours and rhythm, and only two tracks--‘Grapes’ and ‘Cheap Treat’--stand out as cohesive pieces.

Their fourth album has none of the witchy class that makes these others so compelling and comes off like a painfully hokey play-act.

In simple terms, then, the third Razorlight album is utter, utter cobblers.

When it strays from charmingly retro to willfully 'raw' it all goes wrong.

Duffy’s debut is hoovered of personality, principally, because on this evidence, she hasn’t got any.

This is pedestrian, derivative twaddle of the lowest order that embarasses both the '60s and the recent revival fad. [21 Jan 2006, p.33]

It's tuneful enough but, really, the case for the dismantling of 2010's nostalgic apparatus starts here. Less hypnagogic pop, more over-the-hillwave.