3OH!3 are electro-hip-pop white bread American scum.

Perhaps less time spent constructing solid, unremarkable riffs and more spent testing out the percussive qualities of chunks of dead rodent à la Scott might make this album actually exciting. As it is, it’s just adequate.

Thieves Like Us look and sound like three yuppies trying out the music lark after being laid off by an investment banking firm.

It’s frustrating because there’s plenty of great material scattered across these two parts, which would be far stronger as a single, shorter release.

Despite some positives, Gesaffelstein isn’t able to recreate past glories, nor advance on them--or even successfully reinvent himself. By the end of it, you’re mostly left feeling confused and underwhelmed.

What Paul Weller uniquely manages to do to the 12 songs... is to make every one sound exactly like a Paul Weller song. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

The former Sylvia Young alumnis’ latest solo offering is a mixed bag of soulfully gritty D’Angelo-influenced vocals and Busta Rhymes-esque rants.

A lacklustre collection of what sounds like pallid versions of previous hits.

More over-produced introspection. [6 Aug 2005, p.56]

Ironically ‘Jordi’s stand out songs are the ones lacking almost entirely in guest star pull – instead, in these moments, they fuse ambitious, wide-screen arena-pop with messier, more complicated subject matter and Adam Levine’s feelings and experiences over the last three years. It’s here that Maroon 5 break free of paint-by-numbers pop, and unearth introspective clarity instead.

This latest effort might represent a small progression, but it’s far from an evolution.

Is it an improbably good second album? Looks like it.

OThe real problem is the gloopy, mush-mouthed ballads that take up the rest of the album.

Their preoccupation with '70s British metal finds them wandering dangerously into gobilin-and-ghouls prog-rock territory. [5 Jun 2004, p.54]

You can’t help but feel that Gary Go’s biggest ambition is to be on the soundtrack for "The Hills."

They peddle clichés about ugly ducklings and shagging that are so offensive they make a donkey braying into a bin sound like the ripe observations of a Charlie Brooker column.

A gently addictive and well-balanced offering.

Madonna and Perez Hilton may be fans, then, but if you’ve got even a passing interest in actually enjoying a record, don’t buy this one.

So unashamedly beaming with the spirit of 1991 that it should be wearing a flannel shirt and a woozy expression. [22 Apr 2006, p.41]

Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.

The problem for Athlete is that Coldplay are returning in a matter of weeks to show how it's really done. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

At best, his words are boring, silly or totally forgettable.

As its lead single suggested, Eminem is attempting to have it both ways here – to emulate his 2000s hits while lampooning Shady as a cultural relic who makes geriatric barbs at sensitive Gen Z-ers (as on ‘Trouble’), which enables him to say the same old thirstily provocative stuff. The extent to which he does so only overshadows the point he’s apparently trying to make.

Pull The Pin has urgency, a sense of menace and though it deals with issues like war ('Soldiers Make Good Targets') and the London bombings, there's little of the sanctimonious rhetoric Stereophonics of old were guilty of spouting.

This isn’t a country album at all; rather it’s an excuse for Diplo to wear some razzle-dazzle Nudie Cohn-style suits and fancy cowboy hats.

It’s not an issue that this is a pop album. The issue is that it’s weak and is a contrived commercial move.

Tongue-in-cheek humour is Pump’s biggest selling point, but many of the album’s 16 songs (most of which have a running time of just over two minutes) feel like little more than regurgitated punchlines or uninspired variations on themes already set up and adequately executed on the rapper’s early tracks.

The music is as grotesquely over-produced as its lyrics are undercooked, with glossy drum rolls and naff scratching segments fighting for attention on the gruesome battlefield.