Some of it is awful. Some, notably 'Hide Away' and 'Lucky Day' are as good as anything on prime-time Stones album 'Black And Blue', which is saying something.

Morning View's insurmountable flaw is that Incubus sell themselves as an Intelligent and Sensitive rock band, without actually appearing especially intelligent or sensitive.

But if attempting to dress ancient monuments in radical, avant-garde clothing was always going to be a hit-and-miss project, he's still succeeded for the most part in making a richly ambient, evocative record from apparently staid and stale old material.

While charming, Albumin suffers from a distinct lack of harmony.

Songs schizophrenically jump from A to X, from great to merely good, with scant warning or point.

Although it's not quite the perfect pop record 'Video Games' might have led us to wish for, Born To Die still marks the arrival of a fresh--and refreshingly self-aware--sensibility in pop.

There's really only one salient truth about "Ersatz GB" – that The Fall, even at nearly 30 albums old, still stand alone and aloft.

A pleasant listen, but it's hardly fresh.

Essential listening... but only if you're of that particular breed of misfit who grills their cornflakes before adding milk, in order to make breakfast that bit blacker an experience. [1 Apr 2006, p.41]

An older, wiser, more mature and more accomplished Thrills but -- to be honest -- the heart of 'Let's Bottle Bohemia' could quite easily have been made from the leftovers of 'So Much For The City.' [11 Sep 2004, p.54]

Poaching multifarious links from dance music's evolutionary chain, MSTRKRFT grind the good-time sounds of Marshall Jefferson-era Chicago house with harder Detroit techno, and use much of the rest of the album to stretch their ideas out.

It's essentially more of the same kickabout beach-pop that Brian Wilson might have sounded like if he'd listened obsessively to '80s indie legends Felt while he was plaing in his sandpit. [1 Jul 2006, p.36]

Melissa has delivered a hugely sexual, gleefully psychedelic rock record that’s so full of deliciously melancholic stadium destroyers and beautifully de-tuned melodic bombs that, at the perfectly reasonable age of 32, you get the impression that the really good stuff is only just beginning.

Tribes have roared back fiercer than ever.

...And Star Power is the sound of record-collection rock having a nervous breakdown.

It critically casts an eye over Wolf's public persona.

At its best, the album is a selection of polished and inoffensive pop songs, but at its worst, it’s forgettable.

As bewilderingly little logic as Black Dice's rave collages contain, they're nailing something close to unique.

The cocky confidence that barrelled them into the big time might just be losing momentum--a band made of bold leaps have started dipping toes.

For the most part it's clear that the New Zealanders have lost what sense of direction or purpose they had left. [7 Oct 2006, p.39]

Overall it sounds like the work of a man struggling to recall his motivations for making music in the first place.

While being as well-crafted, catchy and dynamic as the first one, it leaves you feeling distinctly underwhelmed, as if the band had simply reprogrammed the Pro-Tools machine that they'd made the first album on and changed the lyrics and speed of the songs a bit.

Strange, out of time, unfashionable, eccentric, obsessed with found sound, full of boffiny tics and tricks. [24 Jul 2004, p.48]

This, basically, is an extremely tastefully done, soulful modern r’n’b record.

Over the album’s 12 tracks, Stefani doesn’t mope once--in fact, a lot of the time she sounds like she doesn’t give a s**t. ‘Where Would I Be’ and ‘Send Me A Picture’ say it with Disney dancehall, while ‘Me Without You’ is the closest she comes to balladry, singing “I don’t need you/not a little bit” over polished trip-hop.

Sadly, the energy and abandon that has made Tiga's recent remixes so essential is largely absent. [4 Feb 2006, p.29]

This fifth album resolutely refuses to tread water, instead coming on like a literary pop version of The Maccabees’ recent explorations in jittery psychedelia.

Bieber appears to have rediscovered his mojo, resulting in one of his most focused projects to date.