One can't help wondering whether this was really the album that Noel Gallagher set out to make when he contemplated a solo career, or just the one he settled for.

Not bad, but not brilliant.

The most effective songs here are those which reach out directly to her family.

There's no denying the aplomb with which Isaak handles even Presley's vocal parts, which are respectful without being slavish copies.

Things pick up in the latter stages, starting with the ebullient “Laughing Gas”, which wouldn’t be out of place on any Tom Petty album. As they proceed, the band’s stays seem to loosen up, and they explore different avenues with commendable spirit.

The big Brill concept doesn't work, Cahn, Cooke and Ellington not being song-factory writers.

The problem is, the album – so full of drawling balladry and anodyne lyrics – is deeply unremarkable. Listening to it is like wading through a quagmire of banality.

It’s wearily repetitive and almost aggressively underwhelming.

Things go rapidly downhill, soured by the earnest, self-important tone of songs like “Grace” and “Ego”; while “Love You Any Less” is just achingly dull, a slice of blandly sepia soulfulness that stains the songs around it.

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.

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

While Doyle struggles to balance his various musical elements--the opening 10 minutes is sheer drudgery--he has a nice way with layered vocal harmonies, which deserve more regular exposure.

Musically, she strays a little too far from her folkie comfort-zone, with varied results

If the music could hold its own, No Man’s Land might make for a more tolerable listen. But the instrumentation is plodding and occasionally appropriative, while elsewhere there is unfortunate evidence of Turner’s limited vocal range.

The problem with albums about depression is that they are the most literal exposition of the principle that an artist has suffered for their work, and now it’s our turn--and doubly so when it’s a 90-minute punk-opera wrenched screaming from their very soul, as here.

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 features blues standards remodelled as reggae skanks, bland takes on the Great American Songbook, and too much acoustic guitar and dobro.

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.

Jack White’s new solo album Fear of the Dawn is basically one long jam session. Which is fine, if that’s what makes him happy. For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a slog.

Unlike previous Vetiver albums, for The Errant Charm, songwriter Andy Cabic entered the studio with vague ideas rather than finished songs, and it shows.

A sort of also-ran footnote to the diva tropes handled with so much more panache by Mrs. Z.

The folksy, pastel tints and subtly uncoiling emotional landscapes have been supplanted by cluttered arrangements and astringent timbres.

On her new album, Pint of Blood – which, lest we forget, is very nearly an armful – Jolie Holland adopts a new, looser working method which isn't entirely to her advantage.

Combined with the faux-naive, fairytale tone of the narratives, it makes for an irritatingly condescending experience. The lofty aimlessness is matched by musical settings.

It's a cartoon of emotion: even when whispering, there's a stage intimacy about her delivery; and at full blast, she has the emotive subtlety of a foghorn, though that may be to surmount the barrage of thundering tom-toms and pounding pianos with which she's been saddled.

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.

It's all very laidback and earnest, but the endless lo-cal homilies ultimately grate.

Less structured and song-oriented than Channel Orange, it’s a long, meandering ramble through Ocean’s passing interests and attitudes, hopes and memories, alighted upon like scenes briefly glimpsed from a train window and then dropped into tracks that aren’t so much sung as delivered in an undulating sprechstimme that seems to be avoiding the difficult choice of a compelling melody.