The wait for the first great Frank Black solo album continues. [Sep 2002, p.100]

A safe, calculated release. [Jan 2004, p.121]

Long-vowelled and nasal - Redman without the charisma - and with a tasty line in mortuary slab terminology, he's never knowingly caught short of a rhyme.

Some Nights is ultimately a confused, turgid tangle of ideas. [Jul 2012, p.100]

Serviceable camp pop as it is, there's little here to attract anyone who hasn't already bought into Gossip. [Jun 2012, p.102]

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]

Their break-up songs are built around a dynamic of sweet boy-girl harmonies and bursts of swearing. [Mar 2006, p.109]

Hoppus, whose flat vocals once dovetailed deftly with Delonge's nasal whine, is sorely exposed as sole frontman. [Dec 2006, p.132]

It's a faintly embarrassing trifle that only a 69-year old ex-Beatle could get away with. [Apr 2010, p.120]

It's straightforward rock'n'roll and it's done with irresistible vim and contagious melody. [Jul 2016, p.107]

Shrigley's humour quickly suffers from the law of diminishing returns; once the initial shock has dissipated, it fails to stand up to repeated listening. [Jan 2015, p.128]

Storytone presents the same 10 songs twice: compellingly naked save for a guitar or ukulele, then dressed to kill in Hollywood strings and big band brass. [Dec 2014, p.119]

Music Kills Me occasionally drifts into the overly familiar world of laid-back jazz grooves, Latino rhythms and flutes, but there's enough elsewhere to intrigue. [Apr 2002, p.120]

Certainly there are some weak tracks... but Long Long Way To Go and Unbelievable are expertly crafted pop-rock tunes. [Aug 2002, p.122]

It is by turns funny, dark, ridiculous, exhilarating and -- most strikingly of all -- relentlessly personal. [Apr 2004, p.104]

Symphonica feels supper-club safe. [Apr 2014, p.103]

There's still no getting over the patchiness. [Mar 2006, p.106]

His hard-hitting electro is basic, but brutally effective dancefloor fare. [Feb 2009, p.119]

These are genuinely moving, but a change in pace wouldn't have gone amiss. [Oct 2012, p.98]

It's all done with a cheeky girl's charm. [Jun 2014, p.115]

The album has a polished sheen, but Leto's delivery of his earnest, sci-fi-tinged lyrics gets monotonous over the course of the album. [Dec 2002, p.96]

It's only on what passes here for a ballad, Black And Blue (A letter), that they overreach themselves. [Mar 2012, p.106]

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

The Prodigy's fifth studio album sounds just like The Prodigy should. Only leaner, harder, and even faster than before. [Apr 2009, p.96]

Hits? Smoke + Mirrors bristles with them. [Mar 2015, p.116]

An unexpected treat. [Apr 2007, p.122]

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

An engagingly quirky rock record. [Oct 2003, p.100]

Almost every track here pales in comparison to the original version. [Sep 2002, p.109]

Dominated by common-or-garden blues workouts, with few of the startling dynamics that marked his former band's finest work. [Sep 2002, p.100]

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

Fray's acute sense of geography, both local and emotional, guides the band's hectically directionless indie rattle down some alluring paths. [May 2008, p.137]

Those seeking the key to The Script's success will remain puzzled. [October 2010, p. 113]

Now reunited--minus Ibold--they are unlikely to win over many fans with this. [Aug 2008, p.135]

This debut is dip-dyed electronica for the Tumblr generation. [Jun 2013, p.103]

This follow-up's newfound glossy production sheen suggests that is the intention [to move toward the mainstream]--but the creativity within is far from diluted. [Apr 2008, p.109]

Strangeland isn't much of a diversion from their fame-bringing formula. [Jun 2012, p.105]

The actual effect... is closer to a whinier Duran Duran, with even their slapped bass-driven grooves hobbled by the paper-thin production. [Apr 2005, p.124]

It's far from perfect, but if this is Exit The Wu-Tang, they can go out with heads held high. [Feb 2015, p.112]

In parts, [the album] is certainly worth it. [Jan 2013, p.113]

A nagging sense of coming late to chillwave's super-saturated afterparty. [Oct 2014, p.110]

In solution, any song could light up your Saturday night; en masse, they sound like a formula wearing transparently thin. [Nov 2014, p.112]

How much you enjoy it will depend on how you feel about largely structureless sonics, but if you just submerge yourself into it, there's plenty to discover. [Oct 2018, p.108]

The sound may gain more traction in a post-Mark Ronson world than his previous electro-based efforts. If only Tillmann didn't have to excise the fun to achieve it. [Jun 2013, p.98]

Alexis Taylor teams up with Spiritualized guitarist John Coxon and Charles Hayward, drummer with post-punk originals This Heat, for a charming diversion that draws freely on '70s jazz, Southern rhythm-and-blues and vintage synths. [Jun 2011, p.107]

It's fun for sure but perhaps not quite the game-changer everyone--or, at least, the band themselves--was hoping for. [Jul 2014, p.112]

Occasionally they stumble upon something magical... but they only highlight the paucity of ideas elsewhere. [May 2007, p.123]

Happily thieir mellowness is balanced by musical variety, from Snow Canyon's hint of Emmylou Harrris country to Forever Me, which is pure Bjork-ish torch song indie. [Mar 2010, p.111]

Singer Pat Monahan has a Michael Stipe-esque voice: part whine part sneer, but with an added dollop of believeable pathos. On this second album, his four colleagues concoct intriguing backdrops... [#180, p.112]

For the most part, Beyond Good & Evil roots itself between Metallica, nu-metal and the slightly psychedelic ambience of '85's Love: the band's pre-metal apex. [Aug 2001, p.124]

In its progress from raw ambition to actual intent, this mirrors U2's great leap forward from Boy and October to War. [Aug 2006, p.108]

Should go down well with listeners who like their singers to take break-ups badly. [Nov 2005, p.125]

At times brilliant, as on the 10CC-gone-disco title track or Belgian pop cover Without Lies, which features California wild-child Sky Ferreia, there are also one too many homages to '80s Italian disco and Euro-trash soundtracks. [Oct 2010, p.103]

The ensemble take more risks with Gabriel's own songs, pulling them into bold new shapes. [Jul 2012, p.100]

Thier fourth album is a step back in the right direction. [Jun 2010, p.120]

Dani Filth's ninth album ramps up the Carry On Screaming! schtick; the result is one he's behind you short of a pantomime. [Dec. 2010, p. 103]

Though his band can meander, Harrison has proven himself his own man. [Oct 2-012, p.107]

Three years after Rod's Soulbook covers album, Hucknall does that bit better, as you would expect from a voice with more than a decade's less wear and tear. [Dec 2012, p.106]

Temper Temper, their fourth, adds an aggressive edge to their sound. [Apr 2013, p.96]

The Ealing doom merchants come of age. [Feb. 2011, p. 110]

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

Unfortunately, Kowalczyk's conceited couplets belong to the dark ages. [Nov 2001, p.124]

A very slick example of production-line soul. [Apr 2002, p.110]

10 unfortunately remains mired in irrelevance. [Jan 2003, p.120]

As tame as it is conventional. [Apr 2005, p.124]

This Kind Of Love is unlikely to rekindle fresh interest. [July 2008, p.111]

A disappointing lack of originality on an album that is all too clearly in thrall to The Libertines and all their many acolytes. [Jan 2009, p.120]

Even the album's most compelling moments... aren't strong enough to save it. [May 2012, p.98]

It might all sound as comfortable as an old cardigan feels but at this point, that seems fair enough. [Jul 2016, p.115]

The Coldplay-leaning Some Other Arms and the flowery-welly wearing Mayflies suggest their final destination may be as soundtracks for the John Lewis catalogue or sunsets on Instagram. [Sep 2016, p.107]

When samba's beat is uppermost, the music takes off. [May 2006, p.129]

Bracing stuff. [Oct 2006, p.127]

It's audacious, sure, but it neither makes sense nor sounds good. [#180, p.102]

An eerily precise facsimile of the grandiose, broken-down dream rock of The Verve.... Close your eyes and it could be 1997 again. [Nov 2002, p.105]

Drenched in feedback and carbuncled with extra riffs, Familiar To Millions makes Be Here Now sound like it was recorded on a four-track by Elliott Smith. Yet unlike recent Oasis albums it's mostly fun, going right back to the broad, singalong Gallagher-karaoke of more innocent times. It helps that the Oasis 2000 set consisted mainly of their earlier, more familiar, better material being put through a wringer of behemoth-rock.

They seemingly can't help breaking electroclash's abiding principle, that of sounding like you're an utterly ghastly person. [Oct 2004, p.121]

It's a record about being Madonna. [Jun 2003, p.90]

Jones's voice and melodic savvy means this album boasts--if you will--just enough entertainment to perform. [Jul 2003, p.109]

The pair mesh with ease. [Jul 2017, p.112]

This warm and busy album pursues pop as a democratic ideal. The uplift isn't subtle--the tracklisting looks like something you'd come up with after a wrap of MDMA-- but it's infectious. [Jan 2016, p.110]

The new problem is a lack of texture: in aiming for big hooks and big bucks, they've thrown variety out the window. [Jun 2009, p.134]

At its worst Etheridge is a sub-Springsteen mistress of the lyrically obvious. But when she hitches a poetic directness to a thumping tune on The Wanting Of You and Company, she's in a league of her impassioned own. [Aug 200, p.119]

Morrissey, at 58, once again proves himself a pop provocateur of enduring efficacy. [Dec 2017, p.100]

Eventually even the guest run out of ideas, leaving only Dupieux's fragmentary electro-funk. [Nov 2016, p.111]

Their cult status is unlikely to change, which is good news for those who like their music warts and all. [Apr 2009, p.108]

The group struts through an early brace of crackling tunes.... Unfortunately though, the album's second half slips - bar the swirling psychedelia of Sioux - into more indistinguishable indie-rock territory. [Oct 2011, p.123]

It would be a solid album for someone like Annie, For The Ting Tings, though, it suggests there's no way back from Nowheresville. [Nov 2014, p.118]

Songs such as Painted Indian and Everything's Fine offer a Balearic-tinged euphoria that ends up sounding like the band are at a party they were forced to go to. [Sep 2013, p.106]

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

An LP that, on balance, really is just for Christmas. [Jan 2018, p.113]

While predictable mall-rat anthems in praise of partying, one-night stands and nocturnal hi-jinks now come with a cathartic edge, their first album in almost a decade feels frustratingly shallow. [Aug 2012, p.104]

The desire to do something different is admirable, but the results are unfocused, like a collection of B-sides to singles that never existed. [Dec 2016, p.112]

To their credit, they've not taken the easy route by simply cutting the bombast and hoping for the best. [Jan 2017, p.112]

An album of tuneful but calculated pop-rock to be admired rather than loved.

Possessing neither Cuomo's melodic nous nor the self-absorbed misanthropy that makes Weezer's best work so compelling, Wilson's power-pop never exceeds cynical expectations. [Apr 2004, p.120]

A sterling showcase for Nelson's bluesier side ?

Some interesting musical touches and flashes of intelligence remain, but muddy mixing and one-paced production make this an overlong bore. [Nov 2002, p.114]

There are too many skits, but there's still more than enough fun to go round. [#180, p.108]