At its best, his songwriting is appealingly simple and straightforward: the title track offers an evocative portrait of a relationship that’s breaking down. But at times, Horan’s lyrics let him down a little.

Like Cyrus, it’s shameless, strange and supremely entertaining.

Never quite hitting the peak of "Hell..." they walk a fine line here between fame-hungry thugs--something that ill-fits them--and existential thinkers with the “intellect of Einstein” and a fondness for sonic dissonance.

Although still fans of start-stop measures and tempo changes, this time around songs are given some welcome room to breathe and the quartet focus on grand, pastoral soundscapes, which loosely recall the likes of Pink Floyd.

Blood Red Shoes is probably the duo’s most satisfying effort to date--frustratingly short of the “quiet triumph” they sing about on closing track ‘Tightwire’, but an admirable racket nonetheless.

For all Hemerlein’s prodigious talents, you can only have your heartstrings tugged for so long before it all gets a bit wearing.

She has talent to burn, but rather than challenge herself, Stone has chosen to throw herself on a multi-million dollar bullet train to the centre of mediocrity.

They may never outshine M83 but Rituals at least establishes Team Ghost in their own right.

It’s spunkier than 2008’s ‘Sebastian Grainger & The Mountains’, but still meek in comparison to DFA 1979.

Nobody can deny this mini album flirts with brilliance, and feels like a pop cultural moment straight out the gate; we just wish there was a little more to it.

'Endless Wire' isn't quite as awful as it should be. [28 Oct 2006, p.33]

Yes, this is still Muse, but here they’re trying to be something else--well, everything else. They are avatars in a ridiculous simulation of teenage nerdery, inviting you to steal away from the nightmare, and into an electric dream.

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.

All done in their trademark chirpy Camden ska way. [30 Jul 2005, p.49]

As a pop product, the album performs its function--and it’s commendable of Minogue to experiment with a different sound. It’s just a shame to hear a pop queen like Kylie seeming to buy into tacky generic artifice because it happens to be in vogue.

Honey suffers when its producers smooth out their rougher edges to accommodate Katy’s chart-star status.

There's the odd good song... but these are rare moments from a band wallowing in coarse experimentalism. [20 Jan 2007, p.31]

It’s not Hudson’s foghorn bellowings that are the real enemy on this record, it’s that motherfucking computer program [Auto-Tune].

While it’s often been easy to sum up McGuinness himself with that statement, whether he wants the attention or not Chroma is a forceful enough effort to propel him centre-stage.

‘Wachito Rico’ exudes a breadth of musicianship that proves Boy Pablo is no flash in the pan, despite having found viral fame overnight.

It’s clear plenty of good choices have been made here. It’s not quite redemption--only time will tell if he’ll curb the recklessness--but it’s certainly a start at reinvention.

Although the off-counter flow can get monotonous at times – unfortunately making a number of the tracks on ‘Michigan Boy Boat’ rather skippable – Yachty’s embrace of the Michigan scene here come across as a daring way of reinventing his once-bubbly rap aesthetic.

A little more variation would have been nice, but you know what they say about stopped clocks.

Where once lo-fi underachievement stifled Barlow's outsider pop genius, 'Emoh' abandons dictaphones to the dustbin and sees Lou documenting his wonderful, incisively literate pop songs with something resembling sheen. [5 Feb 2005, p.51]

Touted as half 'Get Ready', half 'Technique', it lives up to every predictable stylistic retread that entails, to the point of self-parody.... Thank Christ, then, that the songs are so good. [26 Mar 2005, p.49]

It may not possess the mind-blowing innovation of 1995’s ‘Clear’, but when something is as darkly gorgeous as this, it’s hard to quibble.

Stylistically, superficially, this forward propulsion sees him loop back to the start with six-track EP My Dear Melancholy,, which appears to sink back into the browbeaten R&B with which he made his Google-friendly name. This works--sporadically.

'Survivor' is brimful of staccato Timbaland skew-beats and a heroic disregard for the 'all-important' milkman whistleability factor. It is, quite frankly, nuts.