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.