For all its excursions into dancehall and fado, it's no advance on 2014's Rebel Heart: there's a sense of chasing trends. [Aug 2019, p.32]

An overload of genre hopping and exotic finery swamps whatever attracted all the heavyweight talent to her in the first place. [Aug 2003, p.108]

Isn't quite the show-them-who's-boss return that JSBX should have come up with. [May 2002, p.110]

Pleasant but faintly drippy folk-pop. [Dec 2012, p.65]

Plenty of mouth, then, but lacking in trousers. [Jun 2014, p.69]

Song structures are over-egged, resulting in blunted hooks and lost momentum. [Dec 2019, p.25]

All in all, A Thousand Miles is a diverting curio, but no substitute for the original. [Apr 2015, p.78]

A glossy but incoherent neo-rave pastiche. [Sep 2012, p.87]

The Brooklyn five-piece's second record resembles an ordinary collection of pebbles--unlike their early sea-washed gems. [Mar 2016, p.73]

The first four tracks are surprisingly limp-leaved, pastel-shaded electro-synth in a decidedly retro vein. From then on, it gets better. [Dec 2012, p.71]

A reliance on rabbity non-sequiters, plus a tendency to change genres every 11 seconds, makes the point of it all rather hard to grasp. [Mar 2016, p.77]

There remains the faintest hint of gothic romance, a kind of Dead Can Dance Class. But you are likely to slip off trying to locate any kind of edge. [Apr 2015, p.83]

The straightforward rap tracks merely show up his generically braggadocio lyricism and deflated hook, using charmless trap cliche and bringing out the leaden, smoke-headed worst in the likes of Action Bronson, Mac Miller and Ab-Soul. [Jun 2014, p.78]

The DIY production can smother their delicate melodicism, and those parping horns can sound distinctly cheap and shrill. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Guests Toy do their best to push things forward, but their propulsive ways merely emphasise Zeffira's absent voice. [Jan 2013, p.83]

Her country warble may be a little too trad. honey for eclectic tastes. [May 2003, p.91]

There's a certain wonky charm to the title track, but elsewhere Creation is too clean and clearly aimed at a Radio 2 demographic to be much more than background noise. [Jul 2014, p.78]

There are more fine moments--"powder Man" is softly somnambulant, and the cinematic soundscape of "Kubrick" is an intoxicating affair--but self-editing is notably absent. [Apr 2019, p.39]

Unfortunately, this conservative album wastes his eight-member backing band, who have much more range and power than these songs would indicate. [Jul 2017, p.26]

Moth's incessantly hiccuping polysyllabic pop lacks soul and sticking power. [Feb 2016, p.73]

The remixers' default mood is kind of middle-of-the-road electronica, neither daring nor danceable. [Jan 2013, p.79]

The result is both catchy and sadly predictable. [Jul 2013, p.77]

The best songs here are the instrumentals. As a songwriter he relies on too many cliches, remains fiercely devoted to a stiff ABAB rhyme scheme and offers too few insights into his underworld characters. [Oct 2019, p.36]

With strictly 1978 sleeve and clothes, and no new ideas, they just don't matter like their models did. [Sep 2003, p.97]

It lacks a distinctive identity. [Apr 2019, p.31]

Temples seem to be in the thrall of Tame Impala's retro-futurism, but their in-studio moves fall short of Kevin Parker's aerodynamic wizardry, although they come tantalisingly close on "You're Either On Something," nimbly balancing delicacy and majesty. [Oct 2019, p.36]

Dedekind Cut is playful and emotionally varied, allowing for moments of rapture and joyful release amid the brooding, quasi-industrial hum. This tips over into sentimentality on the rippling strings and splashing water FX of Tahoe's tittle track, but the album remains an intriguing hybrid of Arca's fleshy rumble and the KLF's Chill Out. [Mar 2018, p.25]

[Moses Archuleta's] hazy, lo-fi house jams as Moon Diagrams shoot for dreamy but are mostly just soporific. When he occasionally stirs from his torpor to write a actual song, the results are much more fulfilling. [Aug 2017, p.32]

There are too many blandly chipper moments that feel better suited to mobile phone ads than an album. [Aug 2016, p.77]

Turner delivers his self-empowerment anthems with the crunch and earnestness of Billy Bragg or The Levellers. All this bombast gets a little wearying after a while, though. [Sep 2015, p.83]

It's well done, but the price of reinvention has been the band's personality. [Jul 2014, p.76]

The melancholy underscoring even the android-sex jam feels both personal and more than a little musty. [Aug 2016, p.80]

Humour takes too firm a hold as the band play on, creating the probably unfair feeling that this is just a light tribute to old, inspired sounds. [May 2002, p.108]

An ultra-gentrified karaoke set. [Apr 2014, p.77]

This is snappy, high-energy stuff that might be more fun if the slick production didn't telegraph the fact that Kane wants it a bit too much. [Oct 2018, p.30]

Frontman Fred Macpherson's pithy musings on London's hipster demi-monde can be excruciating when set against his band's bog-standard stadium churn. [Sep 2015, p.81]

Never quite rises above the mundane. [Aug 2005, p.98]

The homogenous production gets bland real quick, meaning, that, ultimately, it' shard to care either way about it. [May 2014, p.83]

Lyrically, the album plunges into some vulnerable and troubling places, but musically it lacks a similar emotional range, instead feeling static and one-note. [Aug 2024, p.31]

The new material, with some exceptions, lacks spark and flair, having a sense of anti-climax about it. [Aug 2002, p.106]

"1832" is a departure, with emotional unease preserved in glowing folky amber, but it's an inspired curveball on a largely routine course. [Jan 2017, p.32]

Delve further into Human, though, and you find sterile R&B and schlocky, overwrought lyrics. [Mar 2017, p.37]

Her gusto is undeniable. Sadly, the abundance of karaoke-night misfires among the 30 tracks makes Rockstar such a slog. [Jan 2024, p.34]

Despite a top-drawer guest list, this often feels like empty bombast. [Mar 2007, p.98]

Pierson's first outing without Fred Schneider and co is produced to sound immaculately (and blandly) like 1980s American new Wave pop; enough to make "Love Shack" seem cutting edge. [Mar 2015, p.80]

His music often lags behind in inspiration. [Mar 2002, p.106]

[Like Rats proved] Kozelek could turn his wry tone to any old thing and make it lovely. [Mar 2013, p.73]

Roaring 20s provides cod-reggae backing for Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule to discuss the impact of social media and the nature of fame. [Oct 2013, p.74]

A series of disconnected ideas rather than one concentrated work. [Oct 2018, p.24]

The constant frenzied back and forth between power-pop hooks and furious noise, while fun, begins to feel a little repetitive. [Apr 2021, p.27]

Generally these doomy, comatose soundscapes all sound drearily similar. [May 2015, p.78]

Too often the slick production feels overwrought like a bad Cure facsimile and the songs struggle to breathe, though the murkiness at least conveys the sense of doomed romance. [Apr 2026, p.26]

While there's pleasure to be had from the band's exuberant MC5-meets-AC/DC racket, their dubious tales of salt-of-the-earth hookers, as found in "Call Girl Blues," and drunken lechery, outlined the willfully crass "Hungover And Horny" takes the retro vibe too far. [Jun 2013, p.71]

Maas isn't confident enough to strike out in any single direction, and the LP feels too consciously aimed at crossing over to the pop charts. [May 2002, p.98]

More often than not, it seems like the Technicolor electronic sheen is masking tepid songwriting. [Apr 2021, p.30]

He dips toes in the blues, country, R&B and rockabilly without ever really grabbing your attention. [Jun 2019, p.27]

Overall, Butler's pedestrian appropriation of the clunky beats, tinny handclaps and squelchy vocoder effects of yesteryear sound stale and repetitive. [Jun 2014, p.78]

Ruthless schmaltz is, predictably, the order of the day. [Jul 2012, p.69]

McCartney straps on the bass for two tracks, adding very little to generic rockers typical of the album as a whole. [Oct 2017, p.40]

It's hard to find anything out of the ordinary here beyond the usual blend of angst rock and stadium bombast. [Aug 2013, p.69]

Too many artists on this well-intentioned and occasionally even enjoyable tribute album seem to forget they're country artists. [May 2023, p.38]

Her follow-up, produced by Mark Howard, adds country-gospel choirs and fussy arrangements to her palette, steamrolling any nuance she might bring to these characters. [Apr 2018, p.23]

Though the arrangements here are thinner and the longer pieces feel overstretches. [Dec 2017, p.30]

On her second LP, Gothenburg's Sumie Nagano recites her depressive, wintry haikus in a soft, pure voice over some rather samey accompaniment. [Dec 2017, p.33]

Most of the original tunes on this self-titled debut are formulaic, slogan-heavy jams that rest too heavily on past glories. [Oct 2017, p.36]

His idiosyncratic rhyming style can grate without the leavening presence of other rappers. [Apr 2003, p.116]

Basically, it wants to be the Stones but ends up a bit Tom Petty. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Even the core audience may find this somewhere between a gee whizz and gee swizz. [Jun 2002, p.110]

Sick Scenes is certainly a messy affair, stylistically, and overrun with densely packed lyrics, though it's not entirely without charm. [Mar 2017, p.32]

Sadly, he doesn't have the material to match his delivery. [Jul 2019, p.27]

This is in many ways his weakest since Kill Uncle. [Dec 2017, p.20]

It can at times be truly excellent 21st-century pop, but too often the songwriting just doesn't match up and many tracks are just multitracked signifiers with no connecting tissue. [Feb 2013, p.81]

The eight songs of Midnight Rose range from serviceable to cringeworthy. [Oct 2023, p.33]

A jumbled record that veers from Screamadelica nostalgia to wobbly Bontempi soul to hushed acid-folk without ever quite finding a sound of its own. [Apr 2016, p.79]

It all sounds like The Beta Band swapping confrontation for contentment. [Apr 2002, p.93]

Intrepid, but rarely satisfying. [Sep 2012, p.81]

Mostly sounds like a weary retread of 2005's superb Loneliness. [Jul 2006, p.95]

There are some pretty melodies here, like “Bells”, “Hymn” and “An Intimate Distance”, but there are some tracks where Eno’s melodies are so minimal that they become quite mind-numbingly banal. [May 2022, p.26]

It would be satisfying to hail A Productive Cough as Titus Andronicus' equivalent of Who's Next--but sadly it's more "What the hell?" [Apr 2018, p.37]

Although mercifully less in line with the Kooks/Courteeners hegemony than their first album, The Ride is stodgily dedicated to the Real Rock cause, even while it's shooting for Alex Turner's autobiographical cool. [Jul 2016, p.71]

The glossy production and soaring choruses make it as resolutely user-friendly as her previous albums. [Sep 2012, p.81]

Plodding covers of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" are gratuitously dull and, somewhat revealingly, the most rewarding tracks are probably Runga's two original compositions, seemingly appended as an after-thought. [Feb 2017, p.27]

Disco is too much of a safe, shiny, frictionless crowd-pleaser to deliver much more than mildly entertaining retro pastiche. [Jan 2021, p.31]

Accomplished but oddly characterless, and despite the high hook count, forgettable. [May 2018, p.30]

Brisk playing compensates for some unremarkable songs. [Sep 2002, p.103]

Kate St. John's arrangements are suitably elegant, but most of the performances here are proof that Drake's gaunt, under-performed songs do not welcome wobbly bottom-lipped reinterpretation. [Jun 2013, p.81]

Too often the crossover strategy mires these songs in the most banal cliches of dream pop and arena grunge. [Sep 2018, p.29]

It's sad to hear all their youthful fizz go flat so soon. [Sep 2018, p.28]

Once a songwriter with a deft facility for catchy hooks, his melodies droop under the lethargic tempos, turning his self-deprecation into something like self-absorption. [Jan 2019, p.22]

These sparse, string-based scores straddle the line between wannabe ethereal and grainily earthy. [Jul 2002, p.106]

Some great moments, but too much filler and too few anthems. [Mar 2002, p.99]

His voice remains an effortless marvel, largely wasted on this slick but trite material. [Feb 2016, p.75]

There's no denying the pair know their way around a perky tune, but their songs are unmemorable because their sound is so heavily recycled. [Jul 2016, p.82]

It's a shame that Night Light fails to cohere, especially since the suave, Roxy Music-like shades of Euro-disco in "Going Nowhere" and "In The Middle" suggest another route out of the stylistic quagmire of recent efforts. [Jan 2026, p.36]

The music is largely uninteresting, a bland hotchpotch of dub-flavoured electronic styles. [Feb 2024, p.34]

There are strong moments, from the sweet, mixtape-ready “Backup Plan” to “Sweet Tooth”, which brings pep and rockier guitar. But Moss badly needs a bit more Upside Down energy. [Oct 2022, p.29]

Gone, for the most part, are the aching ballads in favour of identikit stadium rock epics somewhere between Simple Minds and Coldplay, overlain with '90s dance beats. [May 2014, p.73]

A collection of songs that are superficially alluring but, bar standout "Morning Comes," rarely captivating. [Apr 2019, p.36]