Foward Russia! drop the post punk sound and art-school posing in favour of an emo reinvention.... It works best when they don't overcook it. [May 2008, p.134]

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

As super cutesy as a Hello Kitty hair-grip. Best avoided, in other words. [Mar 2011, p.101]

Eclipsing last year's Blueprint, it throws down the gauntlet to challengers Murder Inc. [Jan 2003, p.120]

Greendale is a bonkers, utterly headstrong conceit. Let's hope that Neil Young never stops having them. [Sep 2003, p.111]

There's a sense of make or break here, but it's clear what they deserve. [Sep 2013, p.109]

The creative tension between the two is their main strength. It's when one or the other gains the upper hand that things can go awry. [June 2008, p.143]

The formula really sparks when the layers of sounds are given firm edges. [Dec 2013, p.103]

Distortland continues Taylor's more ruminative songwriting. [May 2016, p.107]

It's singing their filthy lyrics in thick French accents that spoils the party. [Apr 2008, p.115]

Attempts to keep one foot in the streets and another in the mainstream, and largely succeeds. [May 2012, p.102]

It consistently fails to match their parent group's most sublime moments. [Sep 2012, p.110]

Settles for inoffensiveness rather than innovation. [Oct 2002, p.118]

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.

It's hardly revolutionary and nothing eclipses their finest career moment At Your Funeral, but there's nothing too wrong here. [Jun 2006, p.118]

A little less light and a little more shade, though, would make them a far more fascinating proposition. [June 2008, p.138]

Priapic pub rock of the very highest voltage. [Apr 2010, p.106]

This is furious but slick metalcore, but none the worse for that. [Nov 2012, p.103]

Such Hot Blood is best when it's at its most anthemic. [Nov 2013, p.101]

If Not Now, When? sounds like a band operating admirably in the present tense. ;[May 2015, p.100]

It loses its way from time to time and the eagerly anticipated Hal noodles when it should inspire. But when strings soar against clattering drums on Dax, the effect is mesmerising. [Jan 2016, p.113]

There's so much going on, why hold it back by singing from a half-hearted songsheet? [Feb 2018, p.111]

The Brighton duo's fourth LP, recorded in Berlin, throws that baggage away in favour of a cavalier hedonism. [Apr 2014, p.105]

While Heartbreak Warfare and War Of My Life chug pleasantly along in their Police-lite way, and Taylor Swift makes the briefest of cameos on the bittersweet half Of My Heart, true inspiration, as ever, remains a conspicuous absentee. [Jan 2010, p. 120]

Five tracks from the album were released as the Wake Me Up EP late in 2013, but on an album packed with possible alternative hits, the future is already his. [May 2014, p.107]

These songs are insufficiently distinctive and there is a surfeit of ballast in need of jettisoning. [Apr 2007, p.108]

That it doesn't fall completely flat on its face must be considered some kind of triumph. [Dec 2006, p.126]

The atypical melodic 'English Rose' aside, there's little to distingusih Motorizer from its 19 predecessors. [Oct 2008, p.149]