Laura Marling, six years Emmy’s junior, sounds far more worldly wise, and there’s a sense of naivety, rather than innocence, that stops the album being as Joni Mitchell as it thinks it is.

Pretty, but all too forgettable.

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

It's the sound of a band once introspective but alive, now lost, depressed and completely unavailable.

Someone needs to tell Wainwright there's a huge difference between 'epic' and 'over-egged'.

Collections is a confident and professional album, not all that different to 'Acolyte'. And it's not different enough.

The slow, dusky familiarity and lack of dynamics make for more of a groundhog day than transcendence into any fifth dimension.

Albarn's best work has cheek, wit and a smart-alecky desire to shake things up. All this reverence doesn't really suit him.

Your appreciation for this fascinating, frustrating album will ultimately depend on your tolerance for Doseone's unique voice – a strangled croon that threatens to turn milk.

That surprising lack of offensiveness, though, isn't replaced with anything to particularly excite, leaving it a tasteful aural curtain of an album without much of a view beyond.

Luck has its moments, but in terms of defining a way forward for Vek, chance would be a fine thing.

It’s interesting from a certain geeky perspective, but it's never quite as satisfying or substantial as you want it to be.

Rick Rubin’s final Primal Scream-gone-hip-hop remix of ‘A Light That Never Comes’ saves Recharged from disaster, but you might need resuscitating after this lot.

After the ubiquitous presence of '80s-indebted music last year, a follow-up with little stylistic deviation isn't a thrilling proposition: Take Me Over steals a hook from fellow Australians Men At Work, adds ooh-ooh backing vocals and just about gets away with it.

You know those people who moon out of train windows, in love with their own picturesque melancholy? Fionn Regan's third album is like that.

In the main Dean Wareham is too dreary, too frequently.

It's as dreamy and atmospheric as you might expect, but the truth is that only a handful of Jónsi's 15 tunes here really work without the context of some CGI tigers.

Flamboyance and melancholy in equal measure, then, but 'White Noise' mainly leaves you cold.

Not a bad album, but a divisive one for sure.

It just feels like, once again, Coldplay have done the selfless thing and gone out to protect EMI's share price, and at the end of it remain peering off the edge of a cliff edge, wishing they had the courage to jump.

Ultimately, too many of these tunes are rehearsal room grooves in search of a hook.

With two songs playing out at over nine minutes long, one feels that a decent edit would change things from somnambulant to plain dreamy.

London quartet Good Shoes offer little to get flustered over with this sometimes dire, but mostly mediocre second album.

It's solid enough, but given the imagination they once possessed, it sounds like UNKLE are trying too hard.

The Calexico-ish 'The Lady Is Risen' shows he can get close to a folky barnstormer, but on closer inspection the barn appears to be a set prop that might blow down in a stiff wind.

The beats here are as staggering as ever, but of an indulgent 19 tracks, none sound like they were good enough to give to anybody else.

But as a big comeback for these Welsh titans, it's more lost than prophecy...

Sadly, such pop bluster is largely missing from this debut album, which is over-long and obsessed with pained R&B choruses--precisely the reasons we all went off American rap in the first place.