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.

Beneath the patina of skeezy Freshers’-Week-LOLZ lyrics (“got a water-bottle of whiskey in my handbag”) lies a talent.

'Sad' is an Adele-apeing weepie, 'Payphone' has a guest rap from Wiz Khalifa, and both 'Lucky Strike' and 'Fortune Teller' feature cod-dubstep breakdowns.

Intriguing, but unsatisfying.

The title track sounds like it is vocalised by the female speech function on a Mac's TextEdit facility and is roughly the worst thing ever made, yet it's still only the third-worst track on the album

Pop princess turned electro muse fails to deliver.

On the balancing strength of those two songs [Dangerous & Much Too Soon], Michael manages to dodge the bullet enough to be kind of enjoyable. But it's worth remembering that both songs date back to the 1980s.

The beats may be basic and the quality fuzzy... but there are diamonds among the dirt. [21 Aug 2004, p.49]

The positive to come out of this, however, is that on their third album, rather than hollering “YEEEAAHHH” or “WOOOOAAHHH” or “BAAAAYYBEEEEEE” quite a lot over the top of his bandmates’ still-exciting noise, Harvey now has something to sing about.

Only Love is the perfect synthesis of the two distinct elements of this album, and in turn its makers, a whispered build-up bursting into a gigantic beast, brimming with passion and 1970s Fleetwood Mac guitars.

While it's sometimes hateful and sometimes hate-filled, "At Your Inconvenience" is rarely boring.

James' big thing was anthems, and here they do every single anthem they ever thought of. The crowd think it's brilliant, and they cheer when Tim Booth talks about God. The crowd are plainly mad.

If Skinner is coasting on production duties, then Harvey is overcompensating on the vocals.

This is not a subtle record, but these are not subtle times. So grab a Marshall stack, put it through a fascist’s window and let’s start the revolution. Now.

Only a smidgeon less euphoric than ‘EP-1’, EP-2 is another brief broadside that further justifies Pixies’ drip-drip release plan, keeping their ten-year-tour on the road and the intrigue of their new material relentlessly fresh.

The man who made the 's 'Dare'--can't add enough bells and whistles to stop the tunes from sounding like they've been faxed over from one of Stock & Aitken's duller days at the office.

Of course it's pretentious, but the blend of reading-group rock, goth showtunes and gold standard hamming from Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi is surprisingly compelling after a while.

There's just an unavoidable sense here of a band who aren't quite sure what their purpose is anymore.

Their default position is to panel it: hard-driving Zep-worship so unvarying in its pace that Everyday Demons comes on like one long undead riff plus a lot of yawled guff about about being an ‘Evil Man’ with ‘Demon Eyes.'

It sounds like Aerosmith, with plenty of hard-rocking blues swagger and lighters-aloft balladry, but most of the tunes are rubbish.

Christopher is all dreamy lushness with synths that range all the way from zappy to squashy.

Mary J Blige, Ella bloody Fitzgerald and the odious Cee Lo (see above) all phone in a hand, but… look, just get the book [his autobiography], OK? It's brilliant, and this isn't.

At just 11 tracks and 27 minutes long, it’s concise by West’s standards – the days of sprawling masterworks such as ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ and ‘The Life Of Pablo’ are perhaps behind him – but there’s density and focus throughout.

Half the time, Good Charlotte sound like Blink-182 after the snip, the other half they sound like the Backstreet Boys without the songs. [16 Oct 2004, p.48]

HITNRUN Phase One isn’t one of Prince’s best albums. But neither is it his worst. He hasn’t lost it. He’s just resting it.

It's not so much that [they] sound a bit like The Rapture so much as, occasionally, they seem to be running off Xerox copies of specific Rapture songs. [29 Jan 2005, p.58]

The highs occur when Weezer play it straight-ish.

Ultimately, this is just a rock album that does exactly what it says on the tin. They are head-banging, pitch-altering rock songs that may not change the world right away, but they’ll give yer head a little wobble at the very least.