It lacks impetus, panache and compulsion, just for starters.

These tracks offer a similar union of the imaginative and the inspirational, with Lee Perry and The Orb's Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann making musical magic from the most minimal of resources.

Pleasant and pleasingly melodic, but lacking the risky edge that makes a band truly great, The Silver Seas are like the living equivalent of a guilty pleasure.

The found-sounds quickly become irritating--as too, unfortunately, does Wastberg’s wan falsetto, which imposes a mood of victimhood where uplift might be more appropriate. It’s rather sad, because there’s genuine invention in some of his J Dilla-style arrangement assemblages.

The limp, autotuned love song “Happy” and drearily positivist “Good Morning” are lazy nods to the mainstream, but elsewhere Wretch is better served by the dark sparkle of arrangements featuring grimy sub-bass synths and itchy electro beats tinted with eerie vocal samples, thumb-piano and synthetic pan-pipes.

By and large this is a welcome and judicious follow on from Red Flag; it very much feels like All Saints are back with aplomb.

No one will be celebrating Duck for breaking new ground, but long-term fans won’t much be complaining either.

Emotional echoes of this complicated public history reverberate through Jude’s solid collection of mature mid-tempo rockers and ballads. ... Lennon’s production is clean, steely and a little claustrophobic.

Mostly, though, this is music that keeps its head down. Martin accepts his loss too meekly to approach the anguish of a great break-up album.

Black Panties finds him getting back to his core business with rather less artistic ambition.

The cult-like enthusiasm of The Magnetic Zeros is best experienced live, where their massed forces translate into a somewhat muddy morass.

It's a soothing, chillsome experience, though some tracks do strangle themselves in repetitive accretions.

It's full of timid electropop anthems.

This album is more Pringles than caviar. But it’s comfortingly moreish. When it comes to the Jonas boys, it seems that once you pop, you can’t stop.

It doesn’t take many tracks to blunt the impact of Moby’s relentless goosestepping drum programmes and shouty slogans.

No Doubt makes only the most tentative divergences from previously tried and tested strategies, which gives Push and Shove a character that could be described as either dated or timeless.

She’s still in her prime, as you can tell when she delivers a knockout vocal on the guitar-backed ballad “Broken Like Me”. .... But for all her promises to show us the “real her”, it’s a struggle to see it in the slick and sexy production of tracks such as “Mad in Love” or “Rebound”.

This alliance with The Orb is positive for both parties, Perry providing a tighter rein on their tendency to meander, while they furnish him with a different terrain to his usual dub skanks.

With the slight caveat that Laurie's vocals never quite cast off their Englishness (and why should they?), this is a commendable effort which at its best furnishes considerable enjoyment.

Musically, it's pretty much the standard modern electro fare familiar from dozens of contemporaries, from Kylie to Britney. The dubstep riffs are more tortured in places, but when David Guetta and will.i.am are involved in a track's production--as with the bullishly shallow "Fashion!"--you're not straying from the mainstream.

Connick displays his versatility with the bossa nova sway of “I Love Her”, the New Orleans R&B of “S'pposed To Be” and “You've Got It”, and the sentimental country stylings of “Greatest Love Story”.

It’s fine to be influenced by one particular band, but they need to find their own voice or risk being known as little more than The 1975’s pale imitators.

His is the sort of personable charm that even the slickest PR machine can’t drum up. It is also, unfortunately, something that’s too often missing from this album. That and variety.

No wheels have been reinvented on Rushmere. But it’s a solidly crafted and comforting addition to the band's earthy, fraternal oeuvre.

As with Young’s electric-car album Fork In The Road, his single-issue tendencies can grow wearisome after a few songs.

Although it is largely the entirely predictable modern dance-pop creation you might expect from production-line hit maestros Max Martin and Dr Luke, Katy Perry deserves some credit for injecting a modicum of originality into Prism.

The ponderous rocker "How Long Can These Streets Be Empty?" shows up the limitations of a voice better suited to pop and soul.

Comprising as it does outtakes from the sessions for The 20/20 Experience, it's hardly surprising there should be a drop-off in quality for this follow-up; but it's a pretty steep fall.

Certified Lover Boy’s greatest crime is just how bland and boring it is. There’s very little here that Drake has not done better or more emphatically elsewhere; his album is deprived of any kind of experimentation or insight. He rose to the top baring his soul. Now it feels like there’s no soul to bare.

The band have managed to pull it off again, with an engaging collection that refuses to be hidebound by the strictures of indie-rock.

Compared to Chase and Status's fizzing 2011 debut, No More Idols, this sounds creatively knackered.

Ultimately, there’s something genuinely courageous and admirable about Cyrus’s ambitions with Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz. Sure, it’s way too long, and flamboyantly self-indulgent; but it’s free, and it’s fun.

Halfway through, as guest rappers stop littering the proceedings, the album does a 90-degree shift and becomes a banging club affair, stuffed with David Guetta-style synth-stompers.

You’ve Always Been Here is a carefree celebration, a win-win; the band have fun unloading on such un-precious tracks and the songs prove themselves sturdy enough to withstand the punishment. In rock or classic soul circles, it's guaranteed to raise a smile.

Some of the better songs lack that adhesive zeitgeist quality that used to be the group's stock-in-trade. But at its best, there's enough variety and invention to recall The Beatles, sometimes directly. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

A few decent songs may be lurking behind all the sonic detritus; but perhaps they ought to ditch the multitracks and get themselves a ukulele.

What's happened is a slight scaling-down of Ditto's approach, so as not to burst the hems of the more restrained arrangements. It's actually worked to her advantage.

Through it all, Middleton somehow locates the appropriate settings for Shrigley’s perverse poems (or is it the other way round?) with charging techno pulses animating the hysterical protests of a teenager appalled at the vandal antics of a “Houseguest”, and chuntering stomp-beats illustrating the grotesque primitivism of a homicidal “Caveman.”

Expect reassurance rather than revelation and you’ll find the lesser-worn pages of the American songbook elegantly traced.

Competently organised and confidently delivered, it’s an engaging set, but ultimately, like all live albums, essentially a souvenir.

Olly Murs might have a lovely on-screen personality, but only the merest glimmers of character are allowed to shine through the swaddling retro-pop arrangements of In Case You Didn't Know.

London with the Lights On is pretty thin fare, with too many tracks collapsing under the weight of excess sass.

MS MR deal in a similar kind of blandly alienated, metrosexual pop to Hurts, with Lizzy Plapinger's sultry-soulful vocals allied to Max Hershenow's electronic pop arrangements.

Strangeland marks a sad reversion to Coldplay territory after Keane's tentative experimentation on recent releases.

It's 16 years since Mariah Carey's first Christmas album, and there's nothing here to suggest she's developed significantly since then.

It’s a pretty decent album, with their trademark melange of rap stylings at their most spikily effective, each track switching between self-promotion, street-crime narrative, social commentary and cosmological speculation as different members take the mic.

The Zolas are a Canadian indie band whose outsider-pop songs evoke a keen sense of disjunction with the modern world.

Tangerine Reef gives a musical voice to these alien coral creatures and their aquatic world. If only it were a more mellifluous voice.

There is evident ambition on Play, but not a holistic or thorough one. Probing attempts to broaden Sheeran’s sound are offset by melodic and lyrical choices that are too safe.

It's hardly groundbreaking stuff, but McCartney undeniably has an ear for melody.

There are successes here... but the overall effect can be gruelling.

There's an assured balance of passion and restraint in his takes on "I'd Rather Go Blind" and "I Only Have Eyes For You", though his "Lonely Avenue" lacks Ray Charles' relaxed slouch.

Jay-Z, being Jay-Z, spends most of the time banging on about how rich he is, how brilliant it is being married to Beyoncé, and how irritating it is that some people don't find him quite as wonderful as he does.

Alongside some so-so newer material, this latest set revisits earlier triumphs in JD's new style, which owes more to MOR jazz than rock or country. It's not as successful as his 2009 comeback If The World Was You, being something of a halfway house.

It’s an OK effort overall, but far from Kelly’s best work; and it really goes to pieces in the five bonus tracks of the deluxe edition, which spin off in all directions

The absence of those usual big arena hooks proves critical through the rest of the album, when the songs don’t quite hit home.

For while there’s no denying that Low In High School is more musically exploratory than usual, drawing from glam rock, electropop, tango and Tropicalismo, the singer himself has rarely exhibited such a grating combination of spite and self-pity. ... The album’s lengthy centrepiece “I Bury The Living”, an odious slab of trundling guitar bombast, lambasts as “just honour-mad cannon-fodder” the work of soldiers whom he presumes are too stupid to understand the wars they’re involved in.

As before, echoes of classic Primal Scream/Stone Roses psych-rock underpin the grooves, which lope and stride infectiously.

He could easily have served up another full helping of R&B romance, but instead he’s tested himself – something you rarely see in artists of his stature. It’s impressive.

Listening to The Heavy Entertainment Show is a bit like watching EastEnders--a constant barrage of snarling, strutting chippiness passed off as authentic British geezerism.

Though not entirely “unplugged”--there’s a wealth of keyboard drones and subtle electronic detail lurking behind the foreground mandolins and acoustic guitars--applying this stripped-down format to some of their most memorable moments does help dilute the excessive stadium bombast which became a cornerstone of Simple Minds’ style.

There’s a mismatch overall between the angry observations and the pell-mell pop-rock riffing of tracks such as “Cannons” and “One More Last Song”, so eager to curry favour and cajole us into singalong hooks.

[Shows a] lack of development involved in either the music or the creators' worldview.

Arriving several months after the tragic documentary, this soundtrack has a waif-like quality that’s touchingly appropriate, with Amy Winehouse’s demos and live tracks interspersed with brief snippets of Antonio Pinto’s incidental music.

Delta is good but not great.

Tracks like the delinquent reminiscence "How Life Changed" and the mea culpa duet with Chris Brown, "Get Back Up", teeter queasily on the cusp of boast and apology. But you have to admire the gall of a repeat offender brazen enough to feature a quote from Helen Keller in his lyric booklet.

If he tried to find something he liked, he might actually make something worth listening to.

It ticks along unremarkably on smudges of synthesiser and shuffling drum programmes, augmented by acoustic guitar or synthetic brass stabs.

Though not quite as potent as Shangri La, but it constitutes a confident negotiation of the “difficult third album” hurdle.

It’s amusing to hear Method Man claiming “Wu-Tang is for the children, go get your child support on” in “Two Minutes Of Your Time”.... It’s an ironic counterbalance to the sinister lope and slow-rolling menace of the typically inventive drug and gun metaphors of tracks like “50 Shots”, “Bang Zoom” and “The Meth Lab” itself.

Recorded over six days in Nashville with Dave Stewart, the debut release on Joss Stone's own label is, she claims, the first on which she has exerted total creative freedom.

Overall, it treads an uncertain line between bombast and sensitivity.

Origins is further proof of Reynolds’ pop songwriting capabilities and also his ambition when it comes to pushing the messages that matter onto the charts. And there’s no doubting his sincerity. It’s a refreshing quality in a pop frontman.

Innovation, clearly, is not the highest of their priorities. In truth, everything comes a distant second to style.

Musically it’s pleasant enough, with string and wind flourishes either emboldening or offering solace from the folk-rock arrangements; but it’s all a bit samey, and after a while, rather dull.

CSS's La Liberacion offers a much more serviceable blend of their original X-Ray Spex-style doughty amateurism with their slicker, sleeker electropop self.

There are some pretty decent tunes on his 14th album, Make-Up is a Lie. .... But instead of falling face-first into music as we once did and enjoying a good old wallow in self-pity, we must now approach it as a minefield.

Midnight Memories finds One Direction fumbling the transition with clumsy attempts to adopt ill-fitting rock livery.

He avoids turning the songs on this album into as much of a box-ticking exercise as they felt on earlier records, managing to weave influences in with a little more flair.

Though marginally better than its predecessor, BE can in no sense be considered a progression.

His ambitious arrangements need more disarray, and less sweetness.

Track after track follows the same formula, with Newman’s subdued introductory verse swallowed by a huge, anthemic refrain that never lets up, his voice drowned in a tide of orchestra and chorus, all dialled up to 11. It’s quite frustrating.

The comforting simplicities peddled in tracks like “Reunion” and “Knockout” offer the rock equivalent of Donald Trump, currying favour without getting too specific.

For the most part, Circa Waves prefer to channel youthful disillusionment with an aggressive guitar line (bound to open up one or two moshpits) than any grand lyrical statement. They’re not trying to set the world to rights so much as offer fans an outlet for escapism. It’s refreshing.

The bawled slur that passes for Doherty's vocals is less agreeable the older he gets, while the flaccid grunge plaints and raggedy punk thrashes have diminishing appeal.

Natural Rebel, sadly, is paint-by-numbers singer-songwriting. For a 10-track album, it feels hideously overindulgent--only two songs fall under the four-minute mark, and those still feel drawn out by plodding, bog-standard riffs.

Thicke's wheedling tone and sylvan falsetto are engaging enough on this sixth album, though his clumsily backhanded way with a compliment deteriorates as the album proceeds.

Moments after hearing “Best 4 You”, with its slimline groove and sleek falsetto chorus, I can’t remember a trace of its melody or theme: it was just there, and then not there. It’s an experience repeated throughout Red Pill Blues.

An impressive debut, albeit one light on lyrical depth.

Their problem is a lack of originality: they never suggest they'll find a new angle on well-worn roots-rock modes.

There's something about the combination of their shoegazey, distorted drones and James Allan's cracked, sulky Scots brogue that leaves these tales of emotional turmoil oddly ineffectual: even at its most fancifully Spectorian, it sounds strangely insubstantial. And as with bad acting, it's not persuasive enough to make one care.

What's blindingly clear is that, without the sparking creativity of a Syd or Roger, all that's left is ghastly faux-psychedelic dinner-party muzak.

In truth, the move towards country music made on Younger Now is fraught with potholes that she and producer Oren Yoel rarely manage to avoid. The main problem is the half-heartedness of the move.

Long Way Down is stuffed with bogus sensitivity, crystallisations of emotional disquiet couched in chant choruses, and polite piano arrangements reliant on a few chord-changes.

Their brusque punk-pop style and his louche intonation suggest a tidier version of the Libertines.

[Jupiter Calling] still relies too heavily on routine romantic fluff like “Hit My Ground Running” and the glutinous “Butter Flutter.” T-Bone Burnett has been drafted in as producer, and brings his usual taste and expertise

There’s nothing on this record to equal the giddy delight of Perry’s greatest hits. No fireworks to light up the dance floor, but enough to raise a smile.

If Scenic Drive sets out to be an easy-listening accompaniment to a late-night ride, it’s successful. But if you’re looking for something with more clarity and oomph, your car horn may be the better option.