The fascination with sonic texture over tune tends to make everything sound like everything else, as if the tracks were leaking into one another.

He goes straight for the pop-rock formulae. This would have worked better over a shorter span, but yawning as it does on the same mid-tempo pacing means that tracks blur to filler and some good lines get lost in the sludge. The lack of guest vocalists doesn’t help either.

The main failing lies in the lack of distinction of the material, and the lack of excitement in its execution: the only time the album teeters on thrilling is when Neil Young’s Les Paul disturbs the peace of “Down the Wrong Way”.

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

One can’t help thinking the ghosts and echoes of previous scandalous indulgences are rather betrayed by the project’s neat, sentimental manner.

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.

It sounds as if it’s designed to slip down as smoothly as possible, but accordingly, each song slips too readily from the memory.

Gaga's music, let's be frank, is not that much better than, or even different to, that on Femme Fatale, but she knows the lingering appeal of playing dress-up.

As the album proceeds, the band’s strident Mumfordry becomes all too wearing, these songs patently designed more for festival singalong than introspective reflection.

Sadly, WOAPD is devoid of the sly wit of Vile's early material, and consists of mid-paced alt rock, reminiscent of the Dandy Warhols in a coma.

The music struggles to match the lyrical focus, sounding piecemeal and haphazard.

The arrangements are suitably bombastic: there’s a theremin camping up the pub piano on his cover of Laura Nyro’s ”Wedding Bell Blues”. His version of Bruce Wayne Campbell’s (aka Jobriath) 1973 glam stomp “Morning Starship” really sells the wry/cosmic lyrics about a girl picking a rocket’s lock with her hairpin. ... Morrissey’s take on Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” is leaden jazz karaoke, stripping the original of all its haze and drift. The electro-stomp/harp, fading to reflective piano fade-out of his reworking of Melanie Safka’s ”Some Say I Got Devil”, makes a joke of his lifelong self-pity.

Pleasantly undemanding for a few tracks, the album just seems to evaporate away halfway through, as if even its creators couldn't retain interest in it, either.

Seth Lakeman new album is dominated by the past, through celebrations or commemorations of old ways, occupations and disasters.

It's confessional solipsism, lacking the musical compulsion to make one care.

The lite-jazz treatment of standards on Kisses on the Bottom seems like a misstep.

"Cockiness" is barmy enough to stand out from the routine dubstep/electro beats cooked up by such as Stargate, Calvin Harris and Dr Luke.

Rarely has such optimism sounded quite bereft of inspiration. Frankly, negative people have a right to more inventive positivism than this.

The only reliably engaging elements of the compositions are the wonderful choral arrangements that provide most of the mortar connecting Björk's voice to the instrumental parts.

While pleasant in places, there’s a lack of drive about Zach Condon’s latest outing as Beirut.

There's barely a shred of truly memorable content here.

The sort-of-romantic themes and sort-of-funk grooves lend a greater unity than usual, but save for a few tracks, the general impression is of lots of bustling, itchy industry – the scratchy guitars, the scuttling beats, the dying-firework synths – to no particularly attractive end.

Producer Hal Willner has surrounded Marianne Faithfull with some great New Orleans musicians, and got her covering a few Crescent City soul numbers. But it's not territory she occupies comfortably: she doesn't have the abandon to animate Joe & Ann's "Gee Baby", and her delivery of Allen Toussaint's "Back in Baby's Arms" is painfully stilted.

There are occasional moments of unalloyed pleasure on this, but frankly not near enough to persuade one that The Fratellis reunion was worthwhile.

Most are dully baffling.

It offers no narrative to speak of and only brief glimpses of personality. It is a blancmange of watered-down R&B, each song sliding listlessly into the next.

Sometimes, sheer ambition can render music too top-heavy to succeed. Hang, by Los Angeles duo Foxygen, is a case in point.

Three of the record’s 11 – eleven – incongruous covers, seemingly selected by lobbing darts at a Spotify genre cloud, involve Beck showcasing his sub-Dave Gilmour, cruise ship guitar work by playing the vocal lines on instrumental takes of Davy Spillane’s “Midnight Walker” and a couple of Beach Boys tunes. When Depp gets involved things often, somehow, get worse.