Virtually every piece is too leisurely extended beyond its natural span.

They may talk it up as a brave new step forward, but their first album in over eight years can't really be viewed as other than a retrograde move for Jane's Addiction.

Kylie’s Christmas is wearyingly hard going at times.

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.

Judging by The Light Of The Sun, she's expending precious little energy on songwriting and recording, allowing her natural inclination to extemporise far too free a rein.

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.

Overall, the weaknesses far outnumber the strengths. Not, of course, that that will prevent huge sales figures for 4: because those numbers, ultimately, are what it's all about.

It’s not completely without merit--some of the backing tracks have a mesmerisingly entropic grip, as well they might, with 14 writer/producers involved in a single track--but the overall effect is utterly wearying, and unpersuasive: after all, only fools waste pity on the wealthy.

For the most part, though, Blood Red Roses’ vaguely anthemic ditties are as adrift as his sailor, with nothing much beneath the surface.

Meg Baird, formerly the frontperson of Philadelphia-based psychedelic folk-rockers Espers, is left a little exposed on her own solo album.

It's a sound with all flesh stripped off the bone, but Lynch himself sounds like an intellectual playing bogus trailer-trash.

Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.

Green's delivery is too Estuary-Eminem, scattershot hip-hop asperity snarled out with a mockney menace that is too secondhand to be effective.

They’re still sculpted from the same small portfolio of sounds--basically, buzzing distorted guitar riffs and harmony chants borne along on pummelling drum barrages--which tends to impose too narrow an emotional range on the album. It’s like being hectored loudly by a bore.

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.

It’s no surprise, but still no less disappointing, that with all of West’s last-minute meddling of the album’s mixes the record lacks cohesion. Jesus is King feels more like a collection of well-produced skits than a full studio album, and fans will no doubt be wondering whether all the hype and stress that preceded its unveiling was worth it.

This third album sounds exhausted, worn out rather than careworn.

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.

Olympus Sleeping feels dated, and a little forgettable.

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

Pure & Simple sticks for the most part to an agreeable neo-traditional approach.

Routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.

It's mainly brusque and strident raunch-rock, with an unappealing cajoling tone that virtually dares you not to find the songs clever and the hooks contagious.

Clearly, these New York math-rockers have yet to learn the values of de- cluttering, with most of these dozen pieces involving furious industry to no great advantage.

Glam, anthemic and messy Father of All… may be, but “inspired” and “baddest” it is not.

As the album proceeds, it frays apart as Neil’s gaze shifts to bombs and babies in the plodding anthem “Children Of Destiny”, and to Mexican fairground fantasy in the ludicrous cod-Santana-style “Carnival”. Despite similarly sluggish, slouchy manner, young backing band Promise Of The Real fall some way short of the full Crazy Horse, trudging rather than imposing a sense of implacable destiny.

It might have been hoped that the album itself were more impressive.

You’re bound to find yourself dancing to it at some point over the summer. It’s safe. Still polished. Nothing special.