The likes of 'Win Park Slope' are pleasant, but also disappontingly unremarkable. [May 2009, p.112]

Yet for all the nostalgia, the lurching strut of tracks such as Boom Ditty and Breaktime remains undeniably potent and contemporary. [Dec 2005, p.156]

The melodies here are fine, they do a job, but nothing backs up Gag's Warholian rhetoric or scales the barmy heights of Bad Romance. [Jan 2014, p.116]

This crosses the border from homage to mimicry. [Dec 2013, p.108]

Benga is still adept at lacing abrasive beats with airplay-ready soul, but the songwriting doesn't always measure up. [Jul 2013, p.99]

A promising start, but there's room for improvement. [Oct 2018, p.108]

Rap rarely comes more unedited and spontaneous. [Oct 2006, p.125]

In spite of some good songs... the band's urge to be monumental at the expense of their vulnerability is ill-advised. [Oct 2004, p.122]

[They] continue precisely where they left off on 2002's Static Delusions..., bashing their way through 11 indistinguishable songs without recourse to wit, style or tune. [Jul 2004, p.112]

11 new songs of singularly cloying contentment; no soaring highs, no debilitating lows, just minor pop platitudes with hollow, echoing centres.

Unfortunately, too many of their other choruses aim high yet fall flat. [May 2011, p.109]

Fans will crave more drones and dreaminess (Deep War and Lioness (Requium) are half-hearted attempts) and newcomers less stoner arrogance. [May 2012, p.106]

Only really worth investigating if you already own everything by the constituents' day-job acts. [Aug 2009, p.109]

Worthy, but hard work. [Aug 2015, p.115]

Filth's fondness for combining high-minded conceptualism with base British humour is actually their strong point. [Dec 2008, p.123]

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]

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

Fasciination is supposed to sum up their entire ethos, then it is as a quasi-futuristic act wrapped in BacoFoil. [Nov 2008, p.114]

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]

Bounce is the sound of a group who know what they're good at and why. [Nov 2002, p.97]

Sadly, not all the guitar-led tracks work, but for every failure there's a soaring, slo-mo anthem or a downbeat campfire singalong.

It's originality that's lacking. [Jun 2004, p.105]

Yet despite the quality of Can't Get Back To The Baseline and the Kinks-like Give Me A Letter, several semi-acoustic fillers -- of which the dreary, You Are Amazing is the worst offender -- water down the album as a whole.

As a collection of songs, this is hugely impressive. As a debut album, its confidence is right up there with Definitely Maybe. [May 2004, p.96]

When It Was Now comes across like French soft-rockers Phoenix without the arty twists. [Jul 2013, p.99]

It can feel on occasion like being rhythmically walloped round the head with a history book, but when Hamilton properly locks into the immediacy of his and Kim Moyes's immense electronic grooves, its undeniably powerful. [Nov 2013, p.114]

When she does go heavier, the results are tepid. Happily, it doesn't happen very often. [Aug 2011, p.119]

Melodic, expertly crafted and laced with wistful emotion, the only thing missing is the element of surprise. [Apr 2013, p.113]