'Gemstones' sees Adam go much deeper into cabaret territory. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

Ultimately, it’s sketchy and uneven, ridiculous in as many of the wrong ways as the right, but not quite the disaster its tracklisting would suggest.

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.

Harlow deserves credit for veering away from commercial expectations, pursuing a fresh sound, and keeping things short and sweet. But praising an artist for limiting the runtime of a relatively mediocre album is no huge compliment. ‘Monica’ is an easy listen, something jazzy and inoffensive to put on in the background.

Lil Xan is by no means the worst thing to happen to hip-hop, nor does he symbolise its death. However, he isn’t very good either. Stretched to a full album’s worth of material, Xan’s music, like a certain branded prescription drug, quickly tires those with little tolerance.

Radio-friendly insipidness.

‘Take A Look In The Mirror’ doesn’t just sound like a bad album, it sounds like a broken record.

It batters through good taste, though its reggae-lite template is musically forgettable.

Yeah, it’s his shtick, and you could laugh with him if the music was in any way exciting. Unfortunately, however, Dark Touches filth-funk fury is made impotent by sheer lack of hooks.

They sound like they actually mean it. [11 Sep 2004, p.57]

3OH!3 are electro-hip-pop white bread American scum.

Perhaps less time spent constructing solid, unremarkable riffs and more spent testing out the percussive qualities of chunks of dead rodent à la Scott might make this album actually exciting. As it is, it’s just adequate.

Thieves Like Us look and sound like three yuppies trying out the music lark after being laid off by an investment banking firm.

It’s frustrating because there’s plenty of great material scattered across these two parts, which would be far stronger as a single, shorter release.

Despite some positives, Gesaffelstein isn’t able to recreate past glories, nor advance on them--or even successfully reinvent himself. By the end of it, you’re mostly left feeling confused and underwhelmed.

What Paul Weller uniquely manages to do to the 12 songs... is to make every one sound exactly like a Paul Weller song. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

The former Sylvia Young alumnis’ latest solo offering is a mixed bag of soulfully gritty D’Angelo-influenced vocals and Busta Rhymes-esque rants.

A lacklustre collection of what sounds like pallid versions of previous hits.

More over-produced introspection. [6 Aug 2005, p.56]

Ironically ‘Jordi’s stand out songs are the ones lacking almost entirely in guest star pull – instead, in these moments, they fuse ambitious, wide-screen arena-pop with messier, more complicated subject matter and Adam Levine’s feelings and experiences over the last three years. It’s here that Maroon 5 break free of paint-by-numbers pop, and unearth introspective clarity instead.

This latest effort might represent a small progression, but it’s far from an evolution.

Is it an improbably good second album? Looks like it.

OThe real problem is the gloopy, mush-mouthed ballads that take up the rest of the album.

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

You can’t help but feel that Gary Go’s biggest ambition is to be on the soundtrack for "The Hills."

They peddle clichés about ugly ducklings and shagging that are so offensive they make a donkey braying into a bin sound like the ripe observations of a Charlie Brooker column.

A gently addictive and well-balanced offering.

Madonna and Perez Hilton may be fans, then, but if you’ve got even a passing interest in actually enjoying a record, don’t buy this one.

So unashamedly beaming with the spirit of 1991 that it should be wearing a flannel shirt and a woozy expression. [22 Apr 2006, p.41]

Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.

The problem for Athlete is that Coldplay are returning in a matter of weeks to show how it's really done. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

At best, his words are boring, silly or totally forgettable.

As its lead single suggested, Eminem is attempting to have it both ways here – to emulate his 2000s hits while lampooning Shady as a cultural relic who makes geriatric barbs at sensitive Gen Z-ers (as on ‘Trouble’), which enables him to say the same old thirstily provocative stuff. The extent to which he does so only overshadows the point he’s apparently trying to make.

Pull The Pin has urgency, a sense of menace and though it deals with issues like war ('Soldiers Make Good Targets') and the London bombings, there's little of the sanctimonious rhetoric Stereophonics of old were guilty of spouting.

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.

It’s not an issue that this is a pop album. The issue is that it’s weak and is a contrived commercial move.

Tongue-in-cheek humour is Pump’s biggest selling point, but many of the album’s 16 songs (most of which have a running time of just over two minutes) feel like little more than regurgitated punchlines or uninspired variations on themes already set up and adequately executed on the rapper’s early tracks.

The music is as grotesquely over-produced as its lyrics are undercooked, with glossy drum rolls and naff scratching segments fighting for attention on the gruesome battlefield.

You're unlikely to play this record at your next soirée but the breadth and ambition is to be applauded.

III is unspectacular, yet it’s laudable that Billy Talent’s chins to remain unencumbered by the ballbags of big business.

While it doesn’t reach the impossibly high standards of their back catalogue, there’s enough promise to suggest there are good times ahead.

And what illuminating revelation do we learn from the half conceived, cottonmouthed rubbish that constitutes ‘Democrazy’? In full: ‘thank Christ Blur usually finish writing their songs before they sell them, otherwise they’d be shit’.

This patchy album shows these sharp-suited Londoners on safe indie territory, but caught in several minds.

Vile, goth-jock pop with all the wit and nuance of a urine-soaked sock.

For an album called Melodia written by a self-confessed Beatles fanatic who once penned the gorgeous ‘Homesick’ and ‘Winning Days’, actual melodies are rare and most, like ‘Hey’ or the turgid ‘She Is Gone’, sound embryonic at best.

Some of Skins is good, some of it is not good. Musically, the tone is, mostly, consistent and effective, and the album’s overall effect is that of a sickly, vivid insight into a troubled life. And there’s not much else to say about it.

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

Sure, 'The Weirdness' rarely comes close to capturing the feral magic of the band's best vintage work (even if 'Mexican Guy' is built on the same rhythm as '1969') , but, hey, it's The Stooges - and that should be enough for anyone.

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.

For a genre that once sounded astonishingly futuristic, it is quite remarkable how tired and old house sounds now.

Who needs anti-depressants when you have Jesus and schmaltz?

Just when you think they’ve already smithereened the silly barrier, what the world needs most swiftly turns up: Hadouken! go Auto-Tune.

The Queens trio still flow properly and cut a dash.

There are flickers of funky light on the lush old school soul of ‘Ground Zero’ and the Motown-esque ‘Other Side Of Town’, but for the most part it’s all depressingly castrated.

The message is simple: the joke isn’t funny any more, last orders rang long ago and the game is well and truly up.

Over 13 tracks, though, Kreay's 'thing' wears waaay thin.

And Then Boom is the moment the ironic ’80s electro revival finally manages to jump the shark.

In the end, this can't even make you feel angry; just desperately sad. [16 Jul 2005, p.50]

Richard Paul Ashcroft has assembled that most ruggedly authentic of musical backings, a team of LA session players, and walked them through all of his most anodyne default settings, at a deadeningly flat pace.

‘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.

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

Dummy Boy is one of the most unlistenable rap records of this year. ... He’s delivered a bland project. Often, it’s as though he took what was in his drafts folder and released it as a “studio album.”

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

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.

Famous First Words sounds less like a manifesto, more like a misguided step-by-step guide.

Their new stuff is – at best – like a minutely less-annoying Staind.

Young Rebel Set are as comfortable and enjoyable as a Mumford-wool blanket, but when was the last time you got really excited by a woolly blanket?

While Happy Families’ snappy sludge hints at a slight reprieve, the jingle-jangle whimsy of Larry Lizard is a tired reminder that there’s only one crime worse than being outright bad--and that’s being as mind-numbingly banal as this.

Four albums later and it's more of the same, minus the big hooks.

It is one thing to make a clever record, it is quite another to make a clever record that could pass for a pop album, and which oozes humanity while simultaneously delivering a perfect snapshot of modern British life.

It’s a dark, smart and thrilling debut.

It’s a challenge to come away from ‘Death By Rock And Roll’ with much of a sense of who The Pretty Reckless really are. A pastiche of their epic rock ambitions? Something deeper? It’s that tension that frustrates and fascinates.