Andrew Hozier-Byrne’s second album Wasteland, Baby! is still stuck mid-sermon, albeit emaciated from surviving solely on stale communion wafers.

KSI does well to allow his collaborators to come in and do what they do best in their respective styles. ... At times, though, All Over The Place flails in the absence of a singular distinct voice.

Her winning formula back in 2010 was blunt honesty delivered in the form of spoken-word style poetry. Back then, she doled out witty, tongue-in-cheek observations and wry take-downs with ease. Attempts to recapture this style are marred by lazy rhymes and a delivery that’s often more just her speaking over the track.

The follow-up to Let Them Talk follows a similar format of easy-rolling jazz arrangements and simpatico guest spots supporting Hugh Laurie's blues piano.

Featuring a blend of standards and originals spiced with judicious covers of sometimes obscure indie tracks, it manages to sustain a mood and attitude throughout without offering too many hostages to homogeneity.

Sometimes, the changes simply frustrate, as when Josh Homme rations out the hellhound gallop of "Mickey Bloody Mouse" too sparingly. But the additions can bring extra layers of exhilaration.

Their 14th studio album finds the Indigo Girls operating as powerfully as at any time in their career, on a set of uncommonly strong songs performed with the kind of typically understated Nashville polish that affords their signature harmonies the full spotlight.

It's business as usual, but with diminishing returns, on I'm With You--the result, perhaps, of sticking with the producer Rick Rubin for six albums.

The slimmed-down Yuck's sound seems svelte of style, having lost most of its rougher edges and lo-fi feistiness. What's left builds on their Teenage Fanclub-style guitars'n'harmonies approach, but takes it in a less intriguing direction.

Kelly Jones seems particularly bereft of inspiration on Keep the Village Alive, with insipid lyric clichés harnessed to settings that resemble a swift rummage through an arena-rock record collection.

The blend of simplicity and sophistication is fairly well suited to the material, avoiding cloying sentimentality and religiose bluster.

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.

The only failure is the routine indie chugger "Children of the Future".

With songs about mountain men and sentient country houses, it’s like a more pompous (and crucially) humourless version of The Incredible String Band built around flutes, celesta and caterwauling: okay in very small doses, but unbearable at album length.

Horan is impossible to dislike, forever existing on the right side of cheesy, but the result is a record almost entirely stuck on safe mode. You can only hope its stronger moments hint at better things to come.

It all goes wrong later on, in a limp succession of ersatz disco ("Sexual Religion"), routine raunch-rock ("Finest Woman") and empty sentiments like "Pure Love", yet another gloss on Pachelbel's Canon.

"Irish" and "Jetplane" bring a late flicker of focus to the proceedings, but the band's resolute primitivism works to their detriment.

As might be expected, the favourites chosen by Mark Kozelek for his covers album are predominantly those reflecting cloudy, sometimes ambivalent emotional responses.

Overall, it’s an unexpected triumph: bright, sexy, smart and full of life, HITnRUN Phase Two is like the blind date from heaven.

As it is, these seven surviving tracks capture a group in transition from R&B covers outfit to something more significant.

Muse’s seventh album is--happily--anything but diminished.

It seems a huge effort being expended to achieve so little.

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

This is a polished, well-executed effort from one of the hardest-working men in music.

The UK edition of their debut has three extra tracks recorded in a church, which damps things even further. But there is still much to enjoy here.

Not bad, and nice for Nick. But for every good 'un, there's a dull 'un too.

Lyrics have never been the band’s strongest suit, and WALLS is no exception, with the blandest of emotional expressions occasionally punctuated by simple stupidity.

Another dilettante excursion with little to recommend it. [The Independent scored this a 2/5 in the actual printed edition not 5/5 as seen on its online edition]