Unfortunately the stamina isn't there and other tracks hold all the surprise of a Kate Hudson rom-com. [Oct 2012, p.95]

Actual thrills are in short supply. [Dec 2019, p.114]

I-Empire is so in thrall to Edge's guitar sound circa 1984 it could almost be the work of a /u2 tribute band. [Dec 2007, p.112]

The album finds them hamming up their debauched image to the point of self-parody. [Oct 2008, p.149]

The suspicion is that, in parts at least, No World was more satisfying to make than it is to listen to. [Mar 2013, p.104]

The results, while respectfully chocolate box pretty, make Enya seem like a bomb-making radical. [Nov 2002, p.109]

While his fourth album shows he has learnt his way around a reasonable tune - opener Back To The Wild has a distinctive grace - his lyrics can descend into trite cliche or inane observation ("Time it goes on/Life it goes by", "you'd love to pretend you were right/But you're wrong") [Feb 2010, p. 108]

The results, although respectable, were never going to ignite anything like their former glories.

In a world where Interpol already exist, it's hard to get too excited about the twitchy Anglophilia here. [Dec 2004, p.136]

The abundance of weird instrumentals and scattershot doodles suggest that quality control remains an alien concept. [Mar 2006, p.108]

Halfway through, though, Gonzalez's self-indulgence gets the better of him and you're left with half-baked ideas and little else. [June 2008, p.145]

Neil Young sounds like he's up on bricks with his exhaust pipe hanging off. [May 2009, p.106]

Draws heavily on Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys.... It would take a dazzling collection to sound anything other than a poor relation to such synth titans, and this plainly isn't it. [July 2002, p.108]

Where the big boys tick and twitch, Longwave merely plod. [Mar 2003, p.111]

Functional and festival-friendly, their epic naivety quickly becomes wearing. [Jul 2015, p.111]

The Devil's Rain is very silly indeed. [Dec. 2011 p. 136]

Groove Armada continue to have mislaid that sparkledust. [Dec 2002, p.105]

One very minimal idea being stretched over 11 songs to the point that it starts to look very washed-out indeed.

For every fine song, such as recent single I Wish, there's a skip load of ropy ballads.

The lack of any overt passion, energy and fresh ideas makes a numbing and sadly all too predictable listen. [Dec 2008, p.128]

Only the relatively jolly Escape Song is worth excavating from the morass. [Nov 2002, p.97]

His falsetto voice, cutesy pitched-up female backing vocals and playground chant hooks are the stuff of kiddy pop. [Oct 2004, p.123]

Eminem has never sounded more like a man out of time. [Mar 2018, p.107]

Often the players transform the hushed originals into rousing barnstormers, although diehards might baulk at the cluttered performances and newcomers may wonder what seperates the "Prince" from other raggle-taggle troubadours. [Nov 2008, p.107]

For all its feverish bluster, this... is patchy at best. [Sep 2003, p.102]

What might have been a solid, politically-tinged LP is let down by poodle-yelped vocals. [Jun 2014, p.104]

Glynne's voice is a powerful weapon to secure audience submission, yet it quickly becomes a weak link, making Florence Welch sound like Vashti Bunyan. [Sep 2015, p.112]

For the majority of Tyranny, it's almost impossible to understand what's going on or why. [Nov 2014, p.121]

Most of the musical elements remain over-familiar-swelling strings, understated beats, the odd crackly blues sample. [Nov 2013, p.111]

The rest lumbers by in a blur of anaemic vocals and dull soundscapes. [Aug 2010, p.117]

Lyrically trying to hard, and musically under-achieving, it amounts to no more than a shonky indie take on something that, when the pairing is right, can be truly magical. [Feb 2013, p.105]

Too often the reworkings of the songs are either not different enough, or ... just plain boring. [May 2012, p.91]

Half of Zoomer suggests Beck being produced by Aphex Twin, but elsewhere his flimsy songwriting is drowned out by percussive clatter. [Nov 2002, p.106]

Most... is either shapeless mush or verging on self-parody. [Apr 2006, p.116]

The Black Keys may have as much in common with the conventional '70s blues-rock of Canned Heat and Free as they do with the more left-field THe White Stripes. [Oct 2006, p.118]

It's his intermittent, embarrassing rapping [that is the problem]. [Oct 2011, p.113]

Even a saint would find their patience severely tried by this. [Oct 2003, p.118]

Their eighth record underlies their enduring problem: the songs are adequate but anaemic; the playing is slick, seamless and the wrong side of polite. [Jun 2013, p.94]

Takes him out of the bedroom and into the bar room and, as a result, it's a much drearier affair. [Apr 2005, p.120]

You can't argue with the boldness of the move, but it's hard to know who really wants a sensible Sic Alps. [Oct 2012, p.110]

The result is confusion, of what the band really wishes to be. [Nov 2015, p.109]

ILY,IC is marred by the wrong kind of heaviness: Jon Philpot's ponderous vocals or the histrionic art-school thump of Idle Heart and Kiss Me Crazy are reminders that there are other bands (School of Seven Bells, Active Child) doing this sort of dark drama with more guile. [May 2012, p.91]

White Women has all the depth and staying power of a Christmas cracker joke. [Jun 2014, p.106]

Too melodic for metal fans and too heavy for the pop-punk kids who made them famous. [Nov 2004, p.127]

Alas, from [the first two tracks]... the pair slip first into mediocrity and then the standbys of those who have run out of inspiration: backwards recording and pointless noodling. [Jun 2006, p.115]

Her sauntering melodies struggle under the weight of their worthy load. [Aug 2006, p.110]

Although it's all competently realised, it's hard to escape the feeling that this has been done many times over before. [Jun 2015, p.108]

In its own vapid, curiously sexless way, Life For Rent is actually fascinating stuff, so set against the usual rules of successful music that it starts to look oddly revolutionary. [Oct 2003, p.99]

His fourth album is another trough, low on songs and over-reliant on meandering guitar jams. [Apr 2008, p.112]

The voice that set such a spark to West's Gold Digger should be capable of more than this exaggerated comedy sex routine. [May 2006, p.126]

It's the continual indulgence of Lopez's Gloria Estefan ambitions with various generic Latin tracks, completely at odds with everything else, that really grates.

If you can get over the voice--and it is not a lovely thing--Time Changes Everything at least has curiosity value. [Oct 2002, p.104]

For the most part, though, there are too many soggy love songs such as the interminable Give It Back To You and too many moments where they cross the line between smart and smart-arse. [Aug 2013, p.94]

The former Verve leader attempts urban crossover. Look away now. [August 2010, p. 114]

One album might have served better than two. [Jun 2006, p.116]

His knowing delivery is laboured and the relentless schmaltz proves difficult to stomach over a whole album. [Nov 2007, p.141]

Guttural, brutal, and very unpleasant. [Mar 2013, p.101]

The sound of a band running on empty. [Jan 2016, p.115]

A collection of electronics-based tunes, drifting, gently paced but surprisingly torpid. [Mar 2016, p.108]

More than ever, they can be summed up by the epithet "The Brand New Heavies, only a bit more hip hop", peddling a soft kind of soul that fuses old-school influences with feelgood philosophy of the "believe in yourself" variety.

It sounds like a bunch of stoned musicians listening back to half-finished tracks, believing them to be mind-blowingly revolutionary. [Mar 2019, p.115]

When he dials down the combative cliches, he remains a powerful, compelling lyricist. [Jan 2013, p.110]

A little less austerity, however, might have made it easier to warm to the experience as a whole. [Mar 2013, p.94]

This may be some kind of dance music but Play Music is sadly no fun. [Jul 2009, p.133]

The charitable thing would be to blame record label micromanaging because surely nobody would choose to be this unoriginal. [Jun 2014, p.111]

An album made for judicious online cherry-picking. [Jul 2011, p.126]

Aside from the cavernous 'Tension' mosty of the tracks here are disappointingly interchangeable. [Nov 2009, p.114]

His lightly jazzed guitar shuffles pleasingly.... But when he attempts to bring the funk and steam up some windows on Until You're Satisfied, your toes will curl for all the wrong reasons. [Feb 2013, p.113]

Shiny slabs of US radio rock. [May 2012, p.94]

There's a grating tweeness that pushes the saccharine levels far into the red. [Jan 2020, p.113]

Their shift towards a more traditional heavy metal aesthetic seems more a natural progression than an act of desperation. [Nov 2002, p.100]

A sense of will-this-do? hangs over proceedings, from its terse 10-track running time to the soporific delivery. [Jun 2019, p.108]

Too much of the material is ponderous and plodding. [Jun 2009, p.128]

Their first LP in five years falls well short of greatness, reheating past ideas to the point of cliche. [Sep 2019, p.111]

MOR for the Ibiza generation.

Articulate and thoughtful as Kweli's rhymrs are, few of the star producers he's invited along rise to the occasion. [Sep 2007, p.95]

Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson prove to be a depressingly ordinary package of overblown melodies and musty lyrical cliches, expensively ribboned with choirs and orchestras. [Sep 2010, p.116]

Best Of Times lacks the spark of the melodically blessed and, even though there are regular nods to Krautrock, there's a cloying wimpishness that too often derails them. [Apr 2014, p.115]

There's no revist from the muse that delivered the exquisite Temptation Eyes back in 1990. [Sep 2001, p.107]

It's like they've just put all their old sounds together in a slightly different order. [Feb 2005, p.101]

Melodic without being vibrant or actually that pretty, these are songs that seem to sink into themselves. [Nov 2003, p.123]

My Best friend Is You fall over itself to broaden Nash's bard-of-the-piano template. [May 2010, p.113]

Instead of the darkness and foreboding that infects Johnson's original '30s recordings, we get a thoroughly gentrified version of the blues. [May 2004, p.100]

Magnetic sounds like a TV talent show judge's idea of rock music from a band capable of much better. [Jun 2013, p.98]

This Is... Icona Pop does contain some enjoyable moments, but it's a hollow victory. [Nov 2013, p.117]

There's polish here aplenty, yes, but less majesty. [Mar 2018, p.107]

The poolside psychedelia of Space Static Lover is a sparkling highlight; how much of the rest appeals hinges on your tolerance for ruthless pop efficiency. [Aug 2017, p.103]

His rudimentary songwriting skills and questionable quality control render this an exasperating experience. [Apr 2004, p.110]

Her debut album, indeed, is something of a mess, the sense being of an artist trying to run before she can walk. [Jul 2009, p.123]

Often, though, it's just a bit pompous and boring. [Apr 2013, p.94]

There's something rather pinched and prescribed about this weirdness.

Chic but charmless. [Jun 2005, p.111]

Creditably, it strives for depth--political, lyrical and musical--but Happy People gets stuck in the shallows. [Mar 2015, p.113]

Regrettably, Williams fourth album continues her "progression" from convincing acoustic confessional to mild, gutless rocking with sessioneers who lack inspiration. [Nov 2001, p.130]

Embryonic has a cloudy feel, full of hulking, malformed basslines, distorted drums, and melodies that circle without ever ascending. [Nov 2009, p.102]

The tunes, for all that they whistle by breezily enough, lack the snap, crackle or pop that separates the hitters from the makeweights. [Oct 2015, p.113]

Surely a man of his talent has more to offer than this? [Sep 2006, p.109]

Like over-keen Masterchef contestants, they chuck everything onto the plate to show off their skills, resulting in a charmless mess of congealed ideas. [April 2012, p.105]