A disappointment. [Nov 2004, p.124]

After a decade as pop's court jesters, Kaiser Chiefs have finally found their true voice. [May 2014, p.106]

The prepetually gruff Rule, a second division DMX or Redman, and producer Irv Gotti leave no cliche unturned. [Dec 2001, p.124]

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]

Essentially it's Ray Of Light without Madonna. [Mar 2006, p.108]

There is little else that stands out amid the polite noodling. [Mar 2008, p.104]

The Brummie veterans' 16th studio album is every bit as gloriously over-the-top and ludicrous as you might imagine. [Aug 2008, p.135]

It's not essential, but it is a sunny delight. [Oct 2009, p.117]

The lightness of touch is a pleasant surprise, but not as pleasant as the sound of summery Sumner re-engaging. [Nov 2009, p.101]

Their penchant for thuggish lyrics and thudding beats now sounds more monotonous than menacing. [Mar 2012, p.100]

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

Reggae has always plundered country for songs of love and heartbreak. Though seldom with such limp indifference. [Sep 2013, p.109]

The parts here still speak louder than the whole. [Mar 2015, p.110]

Delta reveals layers few would have thought they had. Often though, these moments of interest get flattened by a wave of arena-ready bombast. [Jan 2019, p.108]

Another triumphant reaffirmation of UK dance music's mass appeal. [Jun 2014, p.120]

A fine album, offering quality tunes, if not clever punches. [May 2003, p.100]

Osborne still sings well, but, apart from the late swamp-dirty sequence of Baby Love, Hurricane and Poison Apples, deadly rock orthodoxy prevails.

While his taste is textbook classic, his arrangements are not. [May 2003, p.104]

It's a disjointed affair, but there's no denying the robust confidence with which they carry it off. [June 2002, p.111]

Even its most unlistenable moments command attention with a ferocity that most musicians get nowhere near. [Mar 2004, p.98]

Judgement Days is no disgrace, but nor is it cause to anoint Dynamite as a major talent. [Oct 2005, p.112]

The melancholy is relentless and ultimately rather suffocating. [Sep 2005, p.115]

The major problems with his 14th solo studio album are Starr himself, and Dave Stewart. [Feb 2008, p.102]

Music in monochrome needs blacks and whites, but Silesia only has shades of grey. [May 2011, p.116]

To a saucer-eyed teenager with a head full of pills stood amidst Deadmau5's immersive, impressive son-ET-lumiere experience, watching everything "going right off," it'll probably sound amazing. Maybe the rest of us should just wait outside in the car until the show's over. [Nov 2012, p.105]

At times, notably on Honey Bee, Pritchard's lyrics are sugary enough to induce toothache. However, the ever-present feel-good factor makes this an album as impossible to dislike as seeing the sun break through the clouds. [Oct 2018, p.112]

Comes on like an in-your-face Avalanches, with elements of Pavement-style art-rock and a punk attitude thrown in for good measure. [Nov 2005, p.127]

Day Before We Went To War, co-written by Brian Eno, inflects mundane details with enigmatic dread in a similar fashion to the frostbitten adult pop if ABBA's final years. If only you could hear this colder, bolder Dido in every song. [Apr 2013, p.101]

It all feels empty, like they're striking a pose without knowing why. [Jul 2013, p.104]

This time around, Bugg writes every track. It only makes the stand-out tunes even more impressive. [#361, p.113]

Contains far too many bland ballads. [Feb 2006, p.105]

Devon soul woman meets Dave Stewart, in Nashville. [Sept. 2011, p. 118]

Jollett's weighty musing are all but neutered by his determination to cover all musical bases but, as an alt-rock starter-kit, it's just about perfect. [May 2011, p.109]

Beta Love ultimately feels unfinished. [Apr 2013, p.109]

Alas, for all its genuine charm and the way the two Johns genre-hop without leaving footprints, The Spine lacks the spark of true greatness. [Aug 2004, p.119]

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

It follows the million-dollar formula laid down on 2017's Evolve a little too closely. ... But as emotional Trojan Horses go, few do it better. [Jan 2019, p.110]

I Got Your Number is a sexy, snarling glam rocker, Wonder recalls Smashing Pumpkins at their sunniest and Stuck In A Rut has the strut of prime-time Black Crowes. [Dec 2009, p. 110]

The yearning fluidity of the vocals is checked, unfortunately by guitars that fail to detonate. [Jun 2011, p.114]

This follow-up sees them up the ante slightly. one Man Army is packed with big songs, windswept harmonies, swashbuckling choruses, and less appealingly, big guitar solos when all you wanted was a key change. [Jun 2012, p.105]

Fusing dubstep and rock worked for Pendulum but it's all too easy to get the balance wrong. Josh and Tony Friend's efforts have succeeded in getting their singles onto Radio 1's A-list, but it's an idea that stalls on their debut album. [Mar 2013, p.107]

Ultimately, there's something delicious and monumental about Hurts.[Apr 2013, p.106]

In creating a party record that will easily translate to the festival season's main stages they've also reversed out of the narrow tunnel that, for all their adventure, they were being led into by the bombastic Xtrmntr and Evil Heat. [Jul 2006, p.110]

Galoshes largely succeeds as a document of a delinquent soul finally coming to terms with his own past. [Feb 2009, p.119]

The band's power chorus-penning know-how is evident each of these slick and sometimes over-polished ten tracks. [Jun 2011, p.125]

Whey-faced romantics in black clothing should form a queue. [Aug 2002, p.131]

It's about as vibrant and sweat-streaked as mainstream pop gets. [Dec 2002, p.105]

Some might find Issues a bit too strenuous ("I stand up to them and confront/While you choose to be a cunt, " claims Up) but as fans know, The Slits are meant to be full-on. [Dec 2009, p. 126]

If the themes ate familiar then at least Clock Opera imbue them with a twisty, nervous heroism instead of indie's usual fatalist whingeing. [May 2012, p.94]

Brown's pleasant if largely unremarkable voice rid[es] a set of lean and sultry funk grooves. [Nov 2006, p.149]

While 'Pop Art Blue' strays a little close to coffee table pop, it's an absorbing jouney. [Oct 2009, p.119]

There's nothing as heroic as Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight, but Now (And Then) is a surprisingly successful attempt at emotion. [Jul 2005, p.113]

The View appear to be growing up. Forever, of course, is a very, very, long time. But on this evidence, against all odds, The View look set to run and run. [Apr 2011, p.99]

They fail to relocate it [their exuberance] on the follow-up, which if anything, is even drearier. [Sep 2011, p.104]

The eight tracks and 31 minutes of the Night Train EP/mini-album, recorded during the Pefect Symmetry tour, should sate the faithful. [Jun 2100, p.127]

As an album, it is an imposing structure, a statement to their architectural skill. Beneath their grand design, however, Editors exists in a grey area, mistaking the half-light for night. They're not quite masters of darkness yet. [Nov 2009, p.105]

Sometimes less is more. [Jan 2010, p.117]

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

Artistically, it struggles to cross the velvet rope and push on into greatness. [Jan 2011, p.134]

Some of the more straightforward rockers show signs of fresh thinking. [Jul 2013, p.97]

His second album is braver and more expansive and, in the case of 'Cigarette Eyes,' surprisingly angry. He's getting near to brilliant. [Feb 2008, p.95]

At its worst, only the quality of the backing band distinguishes it from pub rock. [Jul 2006, p.112]

Musically, they could do with a few more gear changes, but it's churlish to complain when the overall effect is so spirit-lifting. [Nov 2008, p.123]

Their debut bounces up and down rather a lot, resorting to ska-punk when everything fails. [May 2009, p.119]

Almost every song is blasted with canyon-sized quantities of reverb. [Mar 2013, p.95]

A sameness of mood is not helped by debatable lyrics. [Apr 2014, p.106]

Disappointingly unremarkable. [Apr 2015, p.97]

This second LP, though, sees the four-piece flit between the two camps with varying degrees of success. [May 2015, p.103]

On Desire shows Drowners deepening and darkening the intrigue around them. [Aug 2016, p.111]

The album's not without its moments--most notably the sense of urgency propelling recent single Have Faith. But too much sounds bloodless. [Jan 2017, p.111]

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

What we have here is a Killers record made without the Killers that sounds like The Killers and is almost as good as The Killers, but not quite. [Oct 2010, p.101]

If there had been a disco episode of Star Trek, then Phenomenal Handclap Band would have provided the go-to floor-fillers. [Feb 2012, p. 109]

A hit-and-miss affair that sporadically hints at what the man is capable of. [Oct 2013, p.111]

A lot of the songs are too eager to please... when they stop trying too hard - like on the woozy, out of phase Holes - they create something far odder and infinitely more interesting. [May 2012, p.96]

En masse, Maroon's brisk acoustic rock settings and the hyperactive rush of words can still have you reaching for the skip button. But broken into bite-size chunks, its bitterly humorous dissection of the fumbling absurdities of modern life and death is not without pathos.

Why didn't they just call it Supernatural II and have done with it? [Dec 2002, p.110]

A profound disappointment... few songs lift themselves above pedestrian tedium. [Nov 2000, p.117]

The new electronic direction is likely to lose more fans than it gains.

It's a mess, but a glorious one. [Apr 2008, p.107]

[Many of] these clean-sounding, jazz-rock rearrangements of songs from 1928 to 1963 prove successful experiments. [Aug 2012, p.100]

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

These songs might not defeat Fu Manchu, but they're a fine addition to Richard Ashcroft's hand. [Nov 2018, p.100]

Thicke's record is wonderfully, brilliantly uncool, a ties-round-the-head, Grandma-friendly wedding reception anthem; and there's more where that came from. [Sep 2013, p.101]

Oddly muted. [Feb 2006, p.104]

While Acolyte sounded assured, Collections occasionally projects a sense of strain. [Feb 2013, p.103]

There's been a strong sense of diminishing returns. [Dec 2014, p.109]

Sounding suitably big and blustery, it's also stuffed with lots of positive thinking and hopes for a better tomorrow. [May 2006, p.128]

Their infectious electro-funk certainly has a new hedonistic swagger. [Feb 2012, p.104]

The sextet have simply folowed their instincts and made a gloriously upbeat pop collection, packed with kitchen-sink productions and thumping choruses, invariably underpinned by Rasmus Nagel's stentorian keyboards. [Apr 2010, p.106]

This return to blitzkrieg riffing is closer to nu-metal than old Stooges. [Aug 2001, p.136]

Masterfully crafted and shot through with outlaw energy. [May 2004, p.101]

The album rallies at the halfway point, becoming a straightforward old-fashioned metal affair. [Sep 2002, p.102]

The results are mixed. [Oct 2004, p.121]

It's all pleasant enough, but sadly, there's too little here to set the pulse racing. [Nov. 2011, p. 140]

Hope St. is an expertly crafted burst of energy. [May 2011, p.119]

Papa Roach may be a band out of time, but there's life aplenty here yet. [Feb 2015, p.113]

It's an accomplished production--but an unambitious production, a reluctance to soar. [Apr 2015, p.102]