Mainly, Halcyon sees Goulding's quirky-as-usual vocals lazily spliced into factory-standard chart dance.

They’re still working out the kinks, though, so a few tracks fail to match their ambition.

Good moments include the drama-packed ‘Just Another Night’ and the fun pop of ‘On A Roll’, but neither resembles the formulaic trash cluttering the rest of the record.

At times it sounds like pastiche but when they're themselves... the 'Couture...' club are amazing. [6 Nov 2004, p.59]

A twinkling set of songs that benefits from Wild Beasts soundman Richard Formby’s gossamer production touch.

$o$ sounds like the most half-baked efforts of Hadouken!, LMFAO and Eugene Hutz.

From the bouncy 'Same Mistake' (this album's 'Is This Love?'), to the darkly nostalgic ballad to years past, 'Misspent Youth', it's a comeback as irrationally happy-inducing as its title suggests.

They wisely avoid toying with any Darkness-style irony, but the Keys' insistence on authenticity does leave the album a little flat and humourless. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]

Still not Friday night material, then, but a moving display of one man's myriad sorrows nonetheless. Bless.

Mojave 3's Great Leap Forward. [17 Jun 2006, p.39]

Is this the best we can do? Desperate-to-be-authentic, carbohydrate-stodgy white blues, played by an elderly man pretending to be a tramp? Really, you deserve better.

This album is an almighty slog, one where the vibrant new is weighed down with a lot of the same old tricks. For all glimpses of bold musical and lyrical steps forward, they remain largely the same band they’ve always been with ‘Return Of The Dream Canteen’ offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that often feels overwhelming.

At times, a lack of crescendo leaves his songs teetering on the precipice of drama. The money shot, though, comes with the title track--an epic, swirling conclusion to his debut.

Momentary Masters is his most satisfying, cohesive record yet, and, in many ways, his most personal.

Not quite double thumbs aloft then, but way fabber than it has any right to be.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

Brilliant band then, not so brilliant boxset.

As a sort of lyrical sermon from the mount with uptempo beats to crush the weak-hearted, 'The Sneak Attack' raises the stakes on the microphone skills front as KRS-One lectures, hectors, drops streetwise politics, and laments the state of the world.

Understated, ramshackle garage-pop treats. [22 Jan 2005, p.51]

Shelter From The Ash is a more sedate affair, full of ghostly baroque folk stories that feel disappointingly ethereal.

Dananan’s first album proper suffers from the same problems as Los Campesinos!’ flawed debut; ‘Black Wax’ and ‘Pink Sabbath’ are both thrilling, if wonky, pop songs, but they could be appreciated more fully as singles rather than back to back.

But from supposedly passionate Vonnegut fans we could do without ‘Sons Of Privilege’ and its student union pop at Uncle Sam (chief findings: U.S.A.=B.A.D.), while much of the rest slips into shouty default mode.

It's only rock'n'roll but you'll probably like it.

Just as you're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, you realise that there's another five-track EP by these self-absorbed, boring, aesthetically bankrupt bellends still to go. Double bummer.

It's a timely refresh of rosy-cheeked indie-pop mores.

Sadly, Wave 1 is a more disjointed, disorienting listen.

Exploratory, intense and without a kickflip or kingskin in sight.

Aside from the vocoder-enhanced cosmic disco that features midway, this is an introverted offering--though much too good to fall asleep to.