Tomorrow's World isn't a bad album but it's not a complete "return to form" either.

Over the course of this slightly bloated track listing there is too much focus on the soft rock element of her sound and this which works to the detriment of her fascinating lyrics and bewitching theatrics.

Most significant is how amazingly catchy the album is. Sure, it might be a bit vacuous lyrically, but Dent May sure can write hooks.

The Other Side of Zero shifts from side to side with some regularity, ranging from bubbly and invigorating to downbeat and expressive. There's a real sense of diversity here, and it's what sets the album apart.

The downside is that both members of Team Beamwell are retreading well-worn paths that lead to nostalgic, rather than newfound, destinations.

The music saves this album from certain disaster--an idea that, at its root is perplexing at best, is executed in an even more clumsy and confusing way.

This new one is definitely worth checking out, or maybe even seeking out, if you dig the whole African guitar Indie rock thing. If you don’t, you may still be pleasantly surprised.

Bricolage is as a sometimes fun but mostly ambitionless and unnecessary project.

With their infectious beats and clear guitars mixed with head-bobbing electronic, New Young Pony Club has what cannot be learned, yet what is one hundred percent necessary for achieving greatness: hubris.

There’s an unshakeable feeling that they’re going through the motions a bit too frequently and that this represents a step backwards for a once fresh and exciting band. Unfortunately, it seems the curse of the third album may have struck again.

It may not be the most unique and memorable of albums, but there's a lot in Boys and Diamonds to like; great thumping melodies, intriguingly mad vocals and moments of beauty (particularly the delicate drumming that closes the album) and shows that Rainbow Arabia are a band that have the potential to be far more interesting than their mundane origins would suggest.

On Ghost Stories, despite a near derailment, they "fly on," moving in fresh directions while keep the catharsis that gave them their audience in the first place.

Unfortunately, they didn’t miss by biting off more than they could chew; it’s more a sense of complacency you get form listening to Walk It Off.

Victorious is premium Wolfmother in places, and pretty much abominable in others.

Despite a fairly catastrophic mid-album dip in quality, there are enough of the big soaring numbers, and a smattering of new ideas to see him through. So it's just like most other Moby albums really.

Overall, its their most accessible, one whose highs are much more pronounced than its lows.

We get a record that is surprisingly dull, which alternates between syrupy, unremarkable ballads and uptempo tracks that sound like they’ve been assembled by a committee of consultants.

There's not a single stand out track, good or bad; and the likes of this album have been released, oh, a million times over, in the past 8 years--it’s not bad, not good, just a drop in a calm, tepid, flat ocean.

Sleep Mountain isn’t entirely unenjoyable; its two main crimes are that it’s too safe with its simple chord patterns and unimaginative riffs, and that it’s too in thrall to the records that have inspired it.

Vandervelde possesses a strong voice and a definite place as a singer-songwriter, even if that place isn’t too far above the rest just yet.

Birthmarks' charm lies in its comforting familiarity.

There is some nice arrangements here, even if too many of the tracks sound like they belong on some type of chillout/easy listening compilation.

Their style fits in between Chvrches and Taylor Swift’s 1989, though not up to that level of craft. Interesting moments, like the echoing guitar of There’s A Honey or the finger-snap rhythm of Loveless Girl, are drowned out by overstuffed songs with unmemorable melodies.

Megadeth's self-titled swan song is weighted down by its own sense of importance.

All told, The Faint, once again, have written a succesful album.

There is little in the way of actual technique or subtlety, and as an album, Prism falls short of its predecessors in the innovation and charisma department.

Part 2, by comparison [to Part 1], simply feels like an inessential cash grab, and it's strong evidence that everyone’s favorite pop star might be overstaying his welcome.

Listen is set to force you into either accepting the band’s new identity or hitting upon the realisation that the band you originally fell in love with have moved on.

King is worth a listen, but only to prepare yourself for their next visit to a neighborhood near you.

A recipe for disaster which tries to please everybody and ends up being enjoyed by nobody.

There may be some great ideas on here amongst the mis-steps, but without any suspense, it is difficult to tell.

The collaborations are interesting, and at times fascinating, but there is little doubt that the destiny of most tracks here will be, once again, as sonic accompaniments to visual productions.

It is, quite frankly, tedious and utterly un-inspiring, lacking any serious ability to convey the emotive forces which I would hope drove the song writing processes. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

In the end it's hard to fathom just who is going to really love this album.

Awful.

Every solid moment on American Standard is outmatched by a one to ten ratio of awry choices for songs that shouldn’t be hard to ruin. It’s almost impressive to see James Taylor screw up songs that are fundamentally easy to cover.

Melodies swoop and soar, vocals are sweet and clear and some of the choruses are truly fantastic. However, its lasting impression is as an omnishambles of poor choices and awful skits and is, simply put, an absolute mess of an album.

Invaders Must Die isn’t a bad album, but in the end it suffers from having a beginning which is, if anything, too good.

While the record isn’t perhaps as instantly impressive as Scale or Multiply, there’s much to enjoy on The Third Hand for an appreciator of the finer points of this thing we call pop music.

Every song on the tracklist is fluid, fresh, and endued with a sense of fun.

The anthemic choruses largely remain but are endlessly unsatisfying and constrained. Given the unmistakeably grittier and less atmospheric qualities of this album it was the right to attempt to temper them; I'm just not so sure they pulled it off.

It is that sense of self that prevails over the pop sheen of Rolling Papers and makes it worth more than a passing listen.

Every song on here comes from a collaboration from a different source, or a different trend that Legend is hopping on. There’s nothing personal here. ... Bigger Love’s second half has painful trap pop (Don’t Walk Away), plastic soul (Remember Us, Always), and a piano ballad closer with no defining traits or features (Never Break), all in classic John Legend fashion.

The album is not an abject failure however, as there are bits, just tiny bits, of it that give off the faintest wisps of something more.

Synths take a higher precedence this time round: it’s an indie-pop record, far from their post-hardcore roots; indeed Living in Song sounds like an Architecture in Helsinki knockoff. But even when you can hear the band trying out new things, it simply sounds turgid.

In the midst of all the new-fangled electricity that positions Mi Ami for creative growth, there is a spiritedness and innovation to their past output that is missing with this new device.

This album may have been a growing pain in their attempt to evolve past their initial signature baroque pop, but it sounds like they missed a few steps that needed to be taken.

Now he's making albums about recovering from addiction, sounding worn out and uninspired. Dude needs to find a muse or something.

Apparently The Wombats only managed to write the one song for the album and so have decided to just repeat it ten times, offering little-to-no variation in tone or tempo--although to be fair to them, they do stick a different synth preset on for each song so you can tell them apart.

Clock Opera have delivered a debut which, just about, delivers.

There are no real standout tracks, it is a four song EP after all and electronica has a slight tendency to blend into one long reverby track. But as a piece, it moves so softly, so deep and so colourful.

Excise a few tracks and La Liberacion would make a good soundtrack to the summer, or what's left of it at least

While Vig does a commendable job in providing tasteful sequencing throughout Tenterhooks, the band sticks to a frustrating middle lane as the album progresses.

This third effort is trying too hard to innovate by, once again in Editors fashion, obviously borrowing from somewhere else.

So Long Forever has a knack of sounding nothing like your prototypical debut album, with no sign of any unsanded edges or rawness. Instead, the album’s sound is that of a band that have honed their sound over a number of exponentially strong releases.

Euphoric///Heartbreak is not an easy listen--as I've already alluded to, it's a convincing notion that this four-piece remain incapable of that--and while it is more theatrically anthemic than the first album, it is feels equally credible and sincere.

People Problems is something the band can be proud of, and it's a great point to move forward from. It's not a breathtaking album, but in the end, it doesn't need to be.

It may be a bit dull and overlong (a three to five song EP of this would have sufficed), but he doesn’t care. It’s his music and he’ll do what he damn well pleases with it.

For Long Way Down is an album that, while often samey and, in the grand scheme of things, says next to nothing, heralds the arrival of a highly talented artist.

While Perry finds the occasional moment of quality here (Smile and Tucked both feel like the best possible music we could get from Katy Perry in 2020), Smile is an album searching for an identity—and when it fails, it falls back on lazy writing.

A 55-minute mess called Curtis, undoubtedly one of this year’s worst releases.

There's no debating in my mind that Digitalism have the potential to produce an album even better than Idealism. But sadly, I Love You, Dude is not it.

More than anything, Big Talk reflects the Vegas background of its middling maestro.

It's not quite bad enough to be dubbed an honest failure, but it's flaws are too debilitating for me to recommend blowing a tenner on a copy.

It is samey, ugly and spectacularly stupid at the same time.

Fresh Air and Midnight Snack. Sagar sounds lethargic and detached, which may be the mood that he's going for; but when he sticks to the same tired motifs, it's hard to feel any more excited than him.

As a longtime fan of Usher, this album has great moments and also lagging tunes.

Millionyoung refrains from too many of the bombastic tendencies of electronic music as a result, and we're left with something quite listenable.

Inexplicably, predictably, Daft Punk have become the first band to produce a retro post-parody of their own work.

[The album] is disappointing, but not because it's unmusical or masturbatory or boring, although it is sure to be dismissed as all these things. On paper I love the idea of the musical direction of the record – there are just some insurmountable problems with the execution of it.

Weezer disappoints again. The rest of the tracks are, for the most part, more throwaway power-pop in the vein of the "Red Album."

The biggest, brashest cartoon this side of Eminem's early albums.

Lasers is an expressive album, more so than his previous records.

Lyrically it’s weak, and the over-polished studio buffing does nothing to emancipate the blueprint that is, essentially, the same as it was 17 years ago.

Lines, Vines and Trying Times isn’t a good record and definitely isn’t the kind of thing you should be looking to investigate further. But if you’re reading this review, the chances are it’s not meant for you, so giving it a thumbs-down is hardly earth-shattering news.

To her credit, she has absolutely carved out her own unique sound, far from the epic, prog-punk productions of Titus Andronicus. However, in the process she failed to deliver a consistent batch of songs.

As convincing as she attempts to sound, Bionic does nothing to persuade authenticity.

If you’re already a fan of 80s alt.pop, or modern shoegaze, then give this album a go; it’s by no means a bad album after all (despite my gripes). But if you’re not a fan this is unlikely to turn you, and may just make you yearn for some music with a bit more bight.

When it comes to developing and honing the craft of songwriting to present a signature sound with a variety of ideas, The Temper Trap fall short.

The album's biggest hindrance is a lack of ruthlessness at crucial moments, eschewing cohesion for broad-stroke stabs at too many genres.

With Runaway, MSTRKRFT find a balance between the antagonistic incursion and electro-funk wizardry, but asides from that standout, the record as a whole is a jarring affair.

The problem with Hymns is that it chugs along with a series of stilted niceties that lack any kind of rhythm or emotion.

What we are left with is a short, mostly enjoyable set that does not overstay its welcome and is quite confident of what it’s trying to be.

Should his solo career continue, this record could stand as an in between point between his teen past and his adult future, but as it stands now, it's just a muddled, occasionally interesting but often baffling pop-rock album.

An occasionally fun, occasionally catchy pop record that will log a few hits, move a few units and ultimately be forgotten once this particular pop trend goes the way of Crunk, Snap Music, the Power Ballad and all the other castoffs in the ever-expanding pop graveyard.

Wet feel disconnected from the album's overarching theme, and though they do put some feeling into their maudlin ballads, you'll come off it without remembering a single note.

The band begins to slog through the session--each song sounds like the sonic embodiment of utter indifference, only this time it’s accompanied by electric instruments.

It's not too hard to imagine the Saunders sisters staring aimlessly while some confused producers shuffle the cards until randomly finding their rhythmic groove. And that's the worst think about this record: constantly thinking of the word studio when you're trying to invest some emotion.

With Junk of the Heart, the Kooks are completely discarding level-headedness in favor of offbeat trial tests that fail to give any of the tracks any added gravitas.

The Hood Internet couldn't decide whether to make a party record or a moody record. They tried to do both and succeeded at neither.

The only saving grace, pun possibly intended, is God Is, where West's voice genuinely cracks as he calls the Lord over a soulful sample. As you might imagine, the production overall is expectedly top-notch. But that's the slight upside to an otherwise tepid attempt at finding commonality with his devout followers—except that we never wanted West to come across as ordinary as the rest of us.

He implicitly tells you to “die, die” on the Slightly Stoopid-resembling Zombie Bastards, after all, a joyful retort to the haters who won’t shut up about how Weezer has become a meme in musical form. But Cuomo, ever the mercurial songwriter, later goes off over the pleasures of parasailing on the escapist, Paul McCartney-recalling High as a Kite. And that’s when Weezer (Black Album) peaks.

It's an in-the-moment album that's best when it's in the moment.

What's also noticeable is how unnecessarily restrained most of the album is.

F.A.M.E. is a vile, despicable album that doesn't deserve to be supported in any way, shape or form. Its very existence is a frightening indictment of our times, in terms of our attitudes to music, women and the cult of celebrity.

Liam Lynch is about as funny as the plague, and even that had its moments in Monty Python. This doesn't have any.

After a promising opening trio of tracks, Sticks + Stones wanes badly, and begins to sound more and more like it's been focus-grouped by industry executives in pursuit of a quick buck until there's barely any semblance of character left.

The occasional highlight isn't enough to make up for the cloth-eared versions of timeless songs found elsewhere on the record, or to cover up for the fact that See My Friends is a mostly soulless, and an entirely pointless album.