Letissier is a fascinating and riveting performer, but this passion project feels unfocused and undercooked. [Mar 2023, p.26]

Slow-shifting movements and droning textures show McCombs choosing familiarity over fresh adventures. [Feb 2003, p.75]

It lacks the debut's punchiness, and a compelling thread to bind those disparate elements. [Oct 2014, p.67]

[A] largely tentative set. [Dec 2016, p.38]

The tasty guitar work is undercut by Wilson's heavy-handed lead vocals and the partners' cliche-ridden lyrics. [Nov 2017, p.26]

The result is endearingly scattershot. [Dec 2018, p.39]

An amusing curio, although you're unlikely to listen to it more than once. [Jan 2015, p.75]

Still gauche and somewhat silly the Moseley mods continue to rehash the first two Traffic albums expertly. [Mar 2013, p.76]

Business as usual then--though any choice moments are somewhat let down by Roy Thomas Baker's sterile production and some badly dated keyboard sounds. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Seems to be his regular melange of jackboot glam and electro-metal spiced up with those endearingly juvenile stabs at pretension and subversion. [Jun 2003, p.94]

Although there are no gaffes here, neither is there much to mark it out from their first. [Jul 2017, p.36]

Her simple, repeitious music is predominantly listless and washed out. [Jun 2003, p.102]

Black gothic grandeur, but with a beige, biscuit-coloured centre. [Oct 2013, p.72]

Overall it's a box-ticking collection unlikely to broaden her mainstream fanbase. [Nov 2018, p.37]

B'Day sounds oddly de-energised. [Nov 2006, p.100]

Manicured cuteness, trite melodies and a tendency to banal, genial navelgazing leave an impression of carpet-bagging slackers contriving decorous but vapid Tourist Board pop. [Mar 2013, p.79]

Other versions are so microscopically different from the originals that you wonder why they've bothered. [Dec 2013, p.71]

It's relentless, formulaic and irritating - and although things improve hugely when they drop the bombast on later tracks such as "where It Belongs", "Blood On The Page" and the gorgeous "Carry On", by then it's almost too late. [May 2025, p.33]

It would be nice to see Dido with more adventurous producers. [Apr 2013, p.69]

Is often guilty of over-earnestness and sentimentality. [Oct 2020, p.27]

There are plenty of good ideas here, but plenty of bad ones, too. [Sep 2015, p.77]

Together, Adams and Lynne have come up with an old-fashioned FM rock album, short on nuance but strong on intent. [Nov 2015, p.71]

Sadly, torrid synthesiser and billowing melodrama make it impossible to see any wry glances cast by Exile. [Apr 2013, p.73]

One for Cornell completists only. [Apr 2021, p.27]

James Devlin adds orchestral strings and cinematic melodrama to his hard-edged urban rhymes on this cluttered second album. [Mar 2013, p.70]

Something of a grind--repeat helpings of grimly strummed acoustic guitar and keening vocals becoming the folk equivalent of consecutive courses of muesli. [Nov 2019, p.29]

When it’s good, she nails squiggly G-funk (“Boom Bap Is My Homegirl”, “Action Groove”) and late-night power-cruising (“Ghostride 21716”). But with no real focus, the whole thing tends to drag. [Jul 2021,p.31]

The caustic wit of their first two albums is too often buried under shouty non-choruses and dirgey post-punk bluster, either side of a couple of more notable moments. [Mar 2023, p.35]

It reprises their indie-modified take on panoramic, heartland rock and synth-pop, though with little emotional impact and no clear intent. [Jun 2025, p.30]

Immaculately crafted as ever, even if his enviable ability to pastiche everyone from Elvis to The Beach Boys ultimately obscures his own musical identity. [Mar 2014, p.75]

Often audacious, occasionally unpalatable. [Jun 2020, p.25]

On the whole it struggles to strike a light, far less catch fire. [Aug 2016, p.78]

There are some pretty-ish tunes here, especially "Butterfly" and You Don't," but an awful lot of workaday garage rattling. [Jun 2016, p.81]

It's so generic it could be sold in a supermarket basics range. [Apr 2012, p.83]

There's no doubting To Kill A King's musicianship, nor their potential to be absolutely massive, but singer Ralph Pelleymounter's mid-Atlantic drawl is as irksome as the abundant lyrical truisms. [Apr 2013, p.79]

Sometimes beautiful, although an ADD-ish attention span means it occasionally comes off somewhat lacking in character. [May 2012, p.75]

Works best when it diverts furthest from the originals. [Aug 2022, p.25]

Most of this album is more laudable than listenable. [Jun 2023, p.26]

A mixed offering, then, from a band still searching, albeit interestingly, for their own centre. [Oct 2002, p.102]

A bit hard to deal with in one sitting. [Apr 2002, p.93]

Writing separately, frontman Rim Wilson and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Carbury have come up with material that falls between the Broadway musical and the motivational speech. [Jun 2015, p.77]

Manson can still whip up an appealingly vengeful turn of phrase, but they retain a tendency to sound stiff. [Jun 2012, p.73]

Never quite persuades you if it's sincerely bitter or a knowing facsimile of an early '80s break-up album. [May 2019, p.29]

The sense of fun has dissipated on Born Under Saturn, an hour of faintly psychedelic heads-down boogie. [Jun 2015, p.75]

Moody shades of The National and Tunnel Of Love-era Springsteen abound, though the whole thing never quite manages to fully convince. [Mar 2024, p.25]

With the entire 10-track affair compressed into just 25 minutes of vaguely expressed melancholia, this flimsy career coda is not the grandly melodramatic Lynchian finale that Li's doom-diva shtick deserves. [Jun 2026, p.32]

Hardcore Poco-heads will reshaped group's Alll Fired Up.... The songwriting, though, is mere genre exercise, mostly, and thin on the ground. [Jun 2013, p.78]

Plenty of charm and style, not much originality or depth. [Apr 2025, p.29]

Abandoning their trademark has forsaken their identity. [Jun 2015, p.80]

It's unwieldy, cheesy, overlong, confusing and, just occasionally, inspired. [Jul 2020, p.25]

Too often, all it offers is the rumble of starting engines. [Feb 2002, p.124]

The fifth album by the Mo Wac founder's creative collective doesn't quite cut the mustard. [Sep 2017, p.38]

Three or four songs short of a really strong album. [Oct 2002, p.107]

Wyman and his band soon settle into a series of mid-tempo songs whose predictable arrangements are matched by bland lyrics and a voice that sounds like it would much rather be someplace else. [Jul 2015, p.84]

A masterclass in menace. [Apr 2005, p.97]

He overthinks the rambling "JTR" and overstuffs the messy collage "Monkey Man."[Dec 2018, p.33]

If you like your pop super-sweet and synthy, fill your boots. [Mar 2020, p.25]

While tunes like "Honeymoon" and "Trick Mirror" have a graceful Fleetwood Mac-style charm, they lack the lyrical bite that was one of her early USPs, and the vocal rasp heard on live performances seems smoothed off. [Sep 2021, p.25]

Holly lacks the heat and fire that makes the best so damn thrilling. [Apr 2014, p.83]

Its fizz fades fast. [Dec 2004, p.142]

The songs are assured, strident and catchy, but often fairly cringeworthy too. [Sep 2012, p.73]

Despite the addition of some burnished guitar licks, the results are as awful as you might expect and his one original composition, "For Love On Christmas Day," isn't much better. [Jan 2019, p.19]

There are some beautiful moments here.... Also some difficult ones. [Nov 2013, p.67]

The Staten Island quartet blend the fixtures and fittings of noisy US slacker rock--Sonic Youth drones, Pavement squalls--but add a bubblegum pop sensibility. Their vocalist Joseph D'Agostino, however, remains something of an acquired taste. [Oct 2016, p.26]

The music is decent enough. .... The problem is Jake Duszik's vocals, which are soft and blank of affect in a way that is oddly characterless. It leaves Rat Wars feeling, if not completely without merit, a bit of an empty vessel. [Review of the Year 2023, p.29]

Lyrically the tone is disappointingly mawkish. [Aug 2012, p.73]

That he can still write a timeless folk-rock melody is evident in songs such as "That Day Must Surely Come" and "After The Harvest", but the contemporary pop orthodoxy of the arrangements and production is disheartening. [Jan 2025, p.35]

It's not always successful...But older songs fare better. [May 2012, p.72]

Ghostface is still, occasionally, a force to be reckoned with on the mic. but Set The Tone feels unworthy of his talents. [Aug 2024, p.34]

Vincent Belorgey’s obsession with buffed-up synths and corny lyrics earnestly sung (“Reborn” by Romuald, “Renegade” by Cautious Clay) does pay off, but the air-tight production and endless cascade of saccharine arpeggios – plus a lovesick Sébastien Tellier pining on “Goodbye” – lays on thick the sentimental shtick. [Jul 2022, p.29]

"Another Shot" adds tension and atmosphere but a tendency toward the derivative come to the for on synth-centreed gloomfest "Can't Get Enough." [May 2012, p.77]

The results are frequently souless and over-produced. [October 2007, p.93]

One new track, "universal Child," fails to lighten the mood. [Jan 2011, p.94]

The generic patchwork of this debut LP suggests it's business as usual at the modern pop production line. [Oct 2009, p.102]

But though folky numbers like "I'm Thinking" are obviously heartfelt, there's sadly little on Goodnight Unknown that matches the glory of Barlow's best work. [Nov 2009, p.81]

Let Them Talk is competent and heartfelt but far from necessary. [Jun 2011, p.87]

Not that there isn't music on Russian Doll that's as lovely as any he's made, but it's brought crashing down to earth by deeply average singer Siobhan de Mare. [Jun 2004, p.86]

Rigidity is a hallmark of electropop, from Numan to Miss Kittin, but Ladytron's plodding rhythms and banal melodies straightjacket their songs. [Sep 2011, p.88]

This fourth offering crams 14 tracks into half an hour and sounds like a sketchbook of ideas rather than a fully formed expression of any kind. [Nov 2008, p.128]

While his unique but resolutely unchanging styles of slap bass shards and cut-up vocal syllables works well in a balanced DJ set, it wears quickly over 22 tracks. [Jul 2011, p.94]

Gomez's clattering eclecticism has won endless plaudits, but now seems like a red herring when their exploratory approach remains fixated on Dixieland, Seventies soul and hip hop. [Apr 2002, p.100]

The languid vocal delivery does little to dispel the Dido comparisions of old, the polite and impassionate tones irking the listener even in the smallest does. [Mar 2009, p.89]

If she began coasting on 2002's Under Construction, here pop's most innovative black female is on repeat mode. [Feb 2004, p.72]

Only the urgent title song stands out amid nursery-rhyme emotions. [Jun 2005, p.110]

The album runs out of steam halfway through as the songs become over-reliant on the production and Nat veers off into Dido territory. [Dec 2001, p.106]

The slow stuff exposes Dex's limited vocals, and his deliberately artless approach feels threadbare--but at least he doesn't take himself that seriously. [Aug 2011, p.97]

This large, noisy album will probably satisfy Embrace enthusiasts while continuing to baffle those who can't see the point. [May 2006, p.105]

Hooking up with Butch Vig, evidently--and trying for a heavier sound, It's a fair effort, certainly, but an unconvincing strategy. [Dec 2007, p.98]

Mostly, though, Morrisette succumbs to her dual predilections for quasi-spirituality and stultifying sappiness. [Oct 2012, p.84]

Connoisseurs of 1972 will be forced to conclude the poor boy's got sunstroke. [May 2006, p.119]

Only on the superb, slow-burning "Gravity" does he really sound like himself. [Nov 2006, p.119]

Saturdays=Youth is embarrassingly earnest. [May 2008, p.102]

Instead of idling into wry balladry of the later works of their obvious idols The Replacements, which would have suited Green Day well, they've affected the airs of Serious Artists. [Jul 2009, p.88]

None of the 12 tracks on Heathen displays anything memorable in the way of melody or chorus, their phrasing short-breathed and tired, their sequences energyless. [Jul 2002, p.108]

A slightly disappointing attempt to hammer their quirks into a more commercial rock shape. [May 2004, p.99]

While Chain Gang Of Love only lasts 33 minutes, it still outstays its welcome. [Sep 2003, p.100]

The lovely packaging far outshines the formless and dated rumblings within. [Nov 2002, p.113]