They just sound bored. [Feb 2005, p.98]

Practically drips with misery. [June 2002, p.112]

It sets Vast Of Cheers up as just another cookie cutter indie band. [Jul 2012, p.96]

All this introspection wouldn't be so bad if Stained put a bit of oomph behind it, but the musical changes lack dynamism and frame the groaning vocals almost reverentially. [#180, p.111]

Overall the glory years seem a long way off and metal fatigue sets in long before the end of its 63 minutes. [Aug 2014, p.108]

The band's punk credentials are immaculate. But that doesn't make them any more fun to listen to. [Feb 2007, p.99]

It's incontestably menopausal, but fairly dapper with it. [Oct 2006, p.122]

If they're not stressing about anything, neither will the listener, meaning meager traces remain when it's finished. [Dec 2013, p.105]

They're unpleasantly listenable. [Jul 2012, p.103]

Mostly, it's just not interesting enough to hold the listener's attention throughout. [Aug 2008, p.139]

Like Leto's performance in the risible Suicide Squad, the result is unsubtle, self-important and not half as good as it thinks it is. [Jun 2018, p.106]

An underwhelming, cursory thing. [Mar 2002, p.125]

It might propel them deeper into the mainstream, but the artistic price doesn't seem worth paying. [Jun 2017, p.105]

There are strong cameos from assorted MCs, particularly Juicy J and Schoolboy Q, but his attempt to talk a girlfriend into a threesome on Story Time is proof there are even worse things in life than dabbling in Eurodance. [Apr 2015, p.108]

Choruses fizzle, lyrics fail to engage and every song is at least a minute too long. [Jun 2013, p.102]

The Fifth sounds like half a dozen different [albums] squashed onto one record. Not good. [Nov 2013, p.115]

There's too little oomph to suggest they'll bother the scorers. [Jul 2017, p.114]

It's just a little underwhelming. [Nov 2013, p.115]

Though Blank's album is full of hits and misses, it's rarely dull. [Aug 2009, p.103]

[The album] is full of reductive, radio-friendly hard rock. [Nov 2012, p.86]

Former Simian singer Simon Lord and Wiseguys mainman Theo Keating fail to do justice to the idea. [Aug 2008, p.132]

Hologram's monotone new wave reeks of a school band rehearsal, released into the wild before its time and without its signature song. [Aug 2012, p.100]

Pleasantly pointless. [Aug 2006, p.116]

Amusing on first listen but--as with so many records sold on amusing wordplay alone--it doesn't stand up to repeated exposure. [Feb 2010, p.105]

Weighted by retro production that gets bogged down in neo-soul moves reminiscent of Sade, though, inspiration flickers throughout without ever reaching full illumination. [Jun 2014, p.118]

The intro to the title track points more toward Foreigner, an impression that continues on the album as dull keyboards fill the spaces once plugged by more interesting acoustic arrangements. [Aug 2016, p.108]

Magna Carta... Holy Grail isn't a dreadful record but it's a redundant one. [Sep 2013, p.103]

The title track and Just Me stand out for their bubbly rhythms, but otherwise this feels grey an mopey. [Mar 2017, p.108]

Too many of the remaining songs sound more like sketches than fully realised songs. [May 2016, p.116]

The least adventurous and most disappointing Coral album to date. [Jun 2005, p.106]

There are exquisite moments here, mostly the simpler ones, but not as many as there should be. [Dec 2002, p.100]

He's an even limper pastiche of [Michael] Jackson than Jackson himself. [Jan 2003, p.123]

There's no hint of an artistic left-turn here. [Dec 2013, p.103]

The results are perplexing. An artist who has made a career out of pushing herself to extremes has put together an album of pappy, poppy songs that sound like they were written between cups of tea in the garden.

Cod-reggae and sunny R&B are the order of the day here, which as beach bar background music would no doubt suffice. But unless Stone is content with coasting she needs a serious rethink. [Aug 2015, p.112]

Unfortunately, aside from Stranger's Kiss, the overall level of artifice here is simply too steep to surmount. [Oct 2017, p.100]

The robots were more fun. [Apr 2005, p.118]

Deeply unengaging. [May 2012, p.94]

It's all tastefully executed, but there is painfully little to get excited about here. [Sep 2013, p.104]

These songs sound more like her collaborators' than hers. [Mar 2002, p.120]

Recent name change can't save disappointing debut. [Sept. 2011, p.105]

His second album Splazsh serves up tense techno without a hint of human warmth. [Jul 2010, p.140]

Eagles may be victims of a world in which their signature sound has been distilled into oblivion. [Dec 2007, p.110]

This record passes right through you. [Feb 2013, p.104]

Aside from 1%'s hushed moments, they're stuck in a rut. [Feb 2015, p.109]

This is middling hip hop fare devoid of So Solid's scrappy, feral energy. [Apr 2009, p.111]

While his lyrics are lascivious to a point, songs such as "Love," "The Hardest Way" and "Heartkiller" are strictly soft-focus, with any semblance of attitude--or actual sex--air-brushed into radio-friendly oblivion. [Mar 2010, p.102]

They seem ground down by arguments. [Oct 2010, p.111]

But, alternating between the laughable and listenable, it's safe to say there's never been anything quite like the sound of him jollily croaking his way through Her Comes Santa Claus or Hark The Herald Angles Sing. [Jan 2010, p. 119]

Sad to say, The List is an overly polite, lifeless collection of tried and trusted country standards apparently recommended as required listening by her father back in 1973. [Dec 2009, p. 126]

Any good news – Liam’s decent fist of songwriting, the less oppressive sound, the professional playing – is rendered largely irrelevant by the gaping chasm where more decent songs should be.

Mostly, though, it's the well-trodden formula of soggy lyrics and wan, rather aimless melodies the main purpose of which seems to be not to offend. [Jul 2004, p.113]

The album lacks the breathless show-stoppers that have long peppered their records.

Glitter continues her slump from gifted to grievous via gratuitous power ballads, dismal disco/R&B and criminal covers of '80s classics. [Oct 2001, p.117]

If iPods came with a button that randomly spliced tracks together it would sound like this. [Dec 2004, p.137]

While there are sprightly, smooth-cheeked moments--the bumptious riff of Blue Velvet, for example--there's a draining lack of invention or novelty. [Sep 2014, p.106]

Despite the hysterical crowd response, Live From Dakota is as meat'n'potatoes as its creators. [May 2006, p.130]

It isn't just that it's (mostly) a covers album, more that so many of the selections are so uninspired. [Jan 2011, p.139]

THe lush '60s pop arrangements are scuppered by overly introspective lyrics. [Mar 2009, p.93]

The home recordings, however, insist this is probably for fans only. [Jul 2009, p.138]

Blatant Queen rip-off Heaven Knows is fun, but it all goes wrong when she breaks out ballads. [Apr 2014, p.116]

The only top notch effort is the title track--Cash's first composition for years and among the best he's ever written. [Jan 2003, p.114]

Sadly, Better Nature is the sound of a band barricading themselves into their own comfort zones. [Apr 2016, p.115]

Third time around there's some deviation from the formula, but the lack of subtlety is a little wearing. [May 2013, p.95]

In Our Trip and Remember Today, the trio manage to strike the right balance between amp-popping fury and pop finesse--unfortunately everywhere else, they don't. [Jul 2004, p.124]

Prism feels transitional, the work of an artist clever enough to be restless, yet unable to split from a winning formula. [Dec 2013, p.110]

All too often the joy is forgettable. [Feb 2013, p.106]

Heavy, punishing and dense groove metal that never quite manages to be memorable. [Oct 2013, p.102]

Raposa's songs are often just a little too aimless. [Dec 2008, p.126]

Thir second album is suitably heavy on post-adolescent angst but, for all frontman Andy Hull's best efforts, singularly lacking it's own voice. [Jun 2009, p.134]

The quartet's hardcore horror shtick has been homogenised to such an extent that this teen-friendly eigth release could soundtrack the next Twilight movie. [Nov 2009, p.101]

Sound[s] like out-takes from [Daft Punk's] Discovery. [Jun 2005, p.118]

If you're eager for a record that eats its influences raw in order to fuel a whole new world you'd better look elsewhere. [Apr 2015, p.112]

It's by no means awful; it's just as if Nirvana had recorded 12 versions of Territorial Pissings for Nevermind. [Apr 2014, p.105]

Now on their fourth singer, their music is built on lunkheadness, all dumb riffs and blustery choruses. [May 2013, p.99]

The wan disco of Sugar And Bullets and Another Land's sub Depeche Mode pastiche show a fatal lack of creative daring. [Sep 2013, p.106]

Opener Drifting In And Out, a shimmering piece of dream pop, is beautifully realised, but the other nine songs fail to live up to its promise. [Feb. 2012, p. 110]

They've sadly cranked up the wackiness. [Apr 2004, p.108]

His music might be expertly crafted in a bland, jazzy kind of way, but ... it still ends up being mainly about him. [Nov. 2011, p. 149]

While you'd hope there is some post-concert studio enhancement afoot, the result is in effect an overly basic live album of new songs. [Oct 2010, p.120]

For all its chiseled flirtation, what Anything In Return fails to offer is any real emotion. [Feb 2013, p.112]

By the end, it feels as if Tegan And Sara need to sharpen their edge before they lose their point completely. [Mar 2013, p.110]

It takes alt-rock drama and boy-band syrup and bolts on some fun.-size arena-singalong choruses. [May 2013, p.103]

Makes for exhausting listening. [Sep 2006, p.108]

McPhun's chirrupy high-register and a synth-pop gloss, which washes over the album from start to finish, only serves to ramp up the all-consuming mawkish tone. [Feb 2013, p.110]

It sounds exactly the same as the first record... Another solid, unremarkable effort. [Oct 2004, p.116]

It's nothing if not ambitious... [but] they simply don't have the depth, or the authority, to pull it off. [Dec 2004, p.143]

At his best, Jean writes great tunes that don't give a stuff for anyone else's criteria of cool, but amid the overlong skits/underlong songs of Ecleftic, and despite the super-silly brilliance of It Doesn't Matter, the lasting impression is of a talent at sea, cut off from his roots and uncertain of the path ahead.

As ever, songs veer between the nigglingly infectious and cliched slush. [May 2003, p.109]

A missed opportunity. [Oct 2012, p.107]

There's little here that lingers. [Jun 2005, p.111]

The only life in these monochrome songs comes from some feedback on Lazy Rain and squalling jazz horns on Revanchism. [Oct 2001, p.130]

Much here amounts to solid AOR, by turns over-polished and underwhelming. [Oct 2017, p.103]

The Soft Bulletin echoes the oft-mimiced Smiley Smile by The Beach Boys, with its psychedelic wobbliness, songs-within-songs and airy termperament.

The dual-drumkit, tribal incantations and ominous drones have a pleasing menace but when you factor in the "concept"... patience starts to wane. [Mar 2006, p.111]

It's accomplished but hard to love, with many squawking digressions. [Jul 2012, p.97]

There is so little personality or variety that when Lornaderek turns out to be a 30-second birthday ansaphone message from his mum and dad, it is not a gimmick but a touching highlight.

Dulli sounds like he's performing at a Sunday pub gig. [Oct 2004, p.130]