More often than not Origins falls flat, with insipid choruses and melodramatic refrains. Big, bold and a little bit naff, this is another bread and butter album from a mindbogglingly huge group.

Almost every sound here is precision-tooled for maximum obnoxious effect.

Because a grand and fabulous mode of theatre pervades everything about this band, you’re often a few degrees off completely connecting.

The results on their 10th studio album are pleasingly baffling.

At its best 'Riot City Blues' is dumb, fun and silly. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

You'll find nothing more despicable this year. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

The overriding feel is of an album just too jaded, too joyless to truly count as a return to form.

The Wombats have aimed low, and in its own special way, This Modern Glitch is a triumph for mediocrity.

We’re all for people celebrating the music they love free from boundaries of race and that, but there’s something inescapably grating about hearing a German/English newspaper heiress wittering on about fucking Babylon in thick patois. Crushingly disappointing.

Things limp from bad to tedious with 'White Noise', a song so passé it just bought its first shares in ITV Digital.

This experimental concoction Redd delivered is a hit-or-miss.

The thing that's not missing here is songs. [18 Jun 2005]

Bread And Circuses isn't bad enough to be s death knell, but neither is it good enough to be their commercial rebirth.

CSS may care deeply about every song (though it often doesn't sound like it), but for the listener, a lot of the charm has worn off.

‘=’ adds up to another album on which Sheeran comes off like a millennial Lionel Richie – namely, a very gifted singer-songwriter who’s sometimes sunk by his saccharine streak.

Like a modern empowered woman, Keane are obsessed with ‘having it all’. Juggling a career, great hair and kids equates for them to making safe, dowdy AOR while giving the finger to those who call them safe, dowdy AOR.

They’ve possibly succeeded in alienating the casual fan with the brief moments of nastiness that are here.

That cat-in-a-swing-coat yowl will still be a divider for many, but it's a snag of human individuality in a smooth, if mixed pack.

BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.

Though there’s a lot to dislike, there’s also the bones of something interesting here. If only they’d stuck with making more numbers like the enticing Adam Green-ish gypsy pop of ‘Neal’, they might just have won us over.

Where Black's muse was once shrieked and otherworldly, it's now distinctly earth-bound. [17 Jun 2006, p.37]

It seems Shaddix still writes most of his songs in purple ink in diaries with little locks on. [28 Aug 2004, p.56]

This may well get those girls on the dancefloor but it crucially lacks the subtle depth to give it that all-important soul.

Still Flyin’ are a silly, dumb blast of a bash worth attending.

Anna falls frustratingly short of hitting the back of the net.

Gone are the fizzy sun-drenched hooks and pint-chucking riffs, and in their place are mawkish vocals, melodramatic breaks and dreary lyrics.

Many people who have heard Flamingo have said it sounds a lot like a Killers album. Wrong. It is more that The Killers' albums sounded like Brandon Flowers solo albums, with a bit of indie guitar on top to snare those Reading & Leeds headline slots.

Harris has distilled all of the synth-popping, amp-busting sounds of electroclash and disco-punk into a complete set of proper pop uppers.