Too much here is self-congratulatory sloganeering. [Nov 2004, p.110]

"SuperRandom" might be a better name. [Nov 2011, p.98]

Only emphasises their problems. [Jul 2006, p.92]

Despite the laudable ambitions of the arrangements, Fray's mundane eye-witness vignettes become wearying. [Mar 2010, p.82]

Now 29 years on, The Devil You Know can't quite muster that kind of muscle [heard in Black Sabbath's "Heaven And Hell"]. [Jul 2009, p.88]

At his best he sounds spontaneous, fresh and unexpected. Yet at other times his quirky ideas can sound half-baked and his songs undeveloped. [May 2003, p.102]

They're back to tacky autopilot, forcing Sean C and LV to save face with two rousing contributions. [Apr 2010, p.84]

Documents a continuing decline. [May 2004, p.93]

The record feels lifeless. [Apr 2006, p.112]

The tentative pop entryism evident on albums like 1999's Knock Knock is largely absent here; instead we have his gruff baritone take us through an increasingly uninteresting outlook on love and life. [May 2003, p.108]

[It] sees [MacKaye] playing to his weaknesses. [Dec 2006, p.106]

Every track here is interchangeable, not only with each other, but with anything from his back catalogue. [Feb 2009, p.76]

Favours artifice over aptitude. [Apr 2003, p.122]

Frequently lovely but a fair few steps short of compelling. [Apr 2005, p.112]

The content is often too light and derivative to suggest they really are saviors in waiting. [Feb 2012, p.89]

The album is carpeted with generic riffage, shredding and mouldy memories of heavy rock's past. [Oct 2010, p.106]

At least it is in its worst moments the songs beome subservient to clunky genre experiment. [Apr 2010, p.92]

The weakness is the music. [Aug 2011, p.79]

More by accident than design, it works sometimes. [Aug 2010, p.79]

Jet's third album has the Guns N' Roses references to the fore, but is worryingly lacking in pizzazz. [Aug 2009, p.94]

Their third full-length radiates the stale resignation of a band whose moment has passed. [May 20111, p.93]

He name-drops so many famous folks he's obviously banking on his connections. [Sep 2003, p.97]

You're left wondering how much more impressive Wilson's stroking pipes might sound with less gauche material. [Feb 2012, p.92]

The combination of tinkling pianos, gutsy strum and homespun wisdom places this very much in the middle of the road. [Apr 2004, p.92]

Things degenerate into a dreary stream of self-pitying/self-mythologising ballads. [Sep 2003, p.106]

Seems dated. [Feb 2005, p.73]

Feels timid and trite. [Oct 2005, p.98]

Lerner's voice--pale and uninteresting, rather than poinant--allow his songs to sag. [Sep 2009, p.96]

The clumsy pot-banging campfire folk of his backing band doesn't help make it all any more listenable. Great lyrics, though. [Mar 2009, p.92]

An efficient if fairly joyless hybrid of the Stones, AC/DC and Oasis. [Nov 2003, p.109]

My Bloody Underground is the sound of someone geting My Bloody Valentine about two-thirds right, which is to say that while BJM can certainly conjure interminable, feedback-slathered drones, they lack Kevin Shields' gift for sonic invention or melody. [June 2008, p.83]

II might as well be a sketch for something more impressive. [Aug 2009, p.94]

It may seem churlish to identify one reunion as especially cynical, but recent Pixies activities have felt notably artless--a situation emphasised by Indie Cindy. [Jun 2014, p.82]

Lavishly appointed, expensively designed and almost entirely characterless. [Sep 2006, p.84]

The albums three producers create a gloopy mix of mid-'80s soft rock and air-punching choruses which lack the urgency of the Killers, while the gambling metaphors and religious images quickly irritate. [Oct 2010, p.94]

Only the sub-Marilyn Manson riff-slammer "Mars Needs Women" stand out in an otherwise generic batch of spoofy "Rocky Horror" lyrics and painful superfluous drum solos. [Mar 2010, p.107]

This drab, psych-wimsy-garnished exercise in English indie classicism stretches his [Oasis's Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs] goodwill. [Jul 2013, p.80]

Audioslave is weighed down by Cornell's po-faced bellow, and it goes on 20 minutes too long. [Feb 203, p.79]

Almost succeeds through sheer force of personality. [Aug 2006, p.108]

An uninspired outfit played into a corner. [Mar 2015, p.73]

Realism is conceptually closer to "69 Love Songs" than anything he's done since, opting for a "variety folk" sound somewhere between Kurt Weill and Sufjan Stevens, but its ratio of heart-felt-to-hokey is out of whack. [Feb 2010, p.93]

Entertaining, largely forgettable. [Jan 2003, p.120]

One man's hurt is often another man's monotony. [Nov 2006, p.120]

It's over-polished and lacks excitement. [Jun 2007, p.119]

B-Real and Sen Dog's adenoidal cartton raps about beefs and bongs can still raise a smile when matched to a sparse, elastic beat, but the novelty of a Cypress Hill comeback has long since worn off by the 15th track. [May 2010, p.86]

For the most part this is worthy of a half-decent coffeehouse open mic night, nothing more. [Dec 2011, p.79]

The result is rather tiring. [Dec 2011, p.95]

Most of the album comes across as a weedy, irritating student pastiche of the DFA sound rather than something that deserves a place in its esteemed catalogue. [Sep 2009, p.105]

Caillat has a sweet, clear voice and the songs are crisply tasteful ("Fallin' For You" is all hook) but rarely go beyond formula. [Nov 2009, p. 83]

The pappy, throwaway nature of the tunes undermines any serious intent. [Oct 2006, p.124]

Veering between faux-soul and Hoxton hipness, Adele simply hasn't found her own voice yet.

[A] fruitless bid to affect euphoria. [Apr 2005, p.97]

For their second album proper, the band have beefed up their sound at the expense of their spindly charm. [Mar 2010, p.89]

Crow sounds as if she's trying too hard to show us that all she still wants to do is have some fun. [May 2002, p.91]

Removed from the comfort of his own musical constructions, they often sound like a collection of rasps, croaks and burrs optimistically corralled in to what just might be words; Latin has never sounded more like a dead language than when Dylan sings in it on "O Come All Ye-Faithful". [Dec 2009, p. 87]

Electro-guru Jim Abbiss... can't salvage much from the band's often tedious three-chord bustlings or Molko's lamely repetitious lyrics. [May 2003, p.90]

Solid rather than eventful. [Nov 2005, p.111]

Owens has never been afraid to comet to terms with his troubled past, but here those stories are slathered in such cliched schmaltz that it's hard to empathise. [Oct 2014, p.76]

The harmonies remain pretty, but the smoothness of those Nashville sidemen exposes the thinness of the songs. [Nov 2011, p.86]

"We return to find a pile of broken kitten bits" they trill on 'GOOJFC,' which may be as succinct an image of their fractured whimsydelia as you'll get. [Sep 2008, p.85]

This simply sounds like junior Jay-Z. [Mar 2008, p.96]

This two-disc compilation charting the journey suggests it was simply a matter of waiting for Travis to falter, tweaking the Coldplay template and amping up the earnest Celtic bluster. [Dec 2009, p. 113]

By now the patience of even their most ardent fans must be wearing thin

Album two finds them pressing the Gilbert O'SuperTramp button with gusto. [Mar 2008, p.87]

Love 2 is a cinematic affair--but not in a good way. [Oct 2009, p.89]

Joyless but effective. [May 2006, p.124]

The whole oddball exercise is almost rescued by "Pinky's Dream." [Dec 2011, p.89]

It's an energetic and clattering punk listen, topped by Ada's louche vocals, but suffers from over-exhuberance in its production. [Jul 2009, p.101]

Tahita Bulmer, once the coy mistress of nu rave, now singing lines like "we wake up in the morning and tyhe glass is empty" in a portentous tone, oddly reminiscent of early-'80s Hazel O'Connor, but no more engaging than her erstwhile deadpan party mode. [Apr 2010, p.95]

A competent, well-intentioned exercise in futility. [Oct 2006, p.110]

High on aggro but low on ideas, it mimics The Pistols' sneer and The Jam's melodies, while throwing in some inexcusably clichéd lyrics.

The mournful tone is seductive, but at times the femme melodrama teeters into All About Eve territory. [Feb 2005, p.83]

Listening to this is like being followed home by a puppy--initially cute and guilelessly affecting, but rapidly irritating. [July 2008, p.104]

Amounts to a consolidation rather than a progression. [Jun 2005, p.97]

Overall, the album feels insular and stultifying introspective, despite the undeniable earnestness of Lee's intent and the passion fueling his ambition. [Dec 2011, p.89]

They're diminished by trying to touch too many bases, often lapsing into sub-Oasis stodge. [Oct 2003, p.114]

ADD is death mental headache. [Nov 2011, p.84]

Their slick, synth-heavy commuter pop is rendered faintly exotic only because you never imagine anyone wanting to make pop music as frigidly bombastic as this again. [Sep 2010, p.90]

Only on 'Time of Songs' do the Tapes sound more than just another bunch of collegiate slackers with cool record collections. [May 2008, p.111]

Cleverer and more talented people--say Clive James and Pete Atkin--have tried to make such collaborations work, and failed. Folds and Hornby join the line, a faint whiff of misogyny trailing behind them. [Oct 2010, p.97]

There's a self-indulgence at play when can become aggravating. [Nov 2006, p.128]

Five years in gestation, these revved-up anthems are fuctional enough, but none have the catchy ska-punk bounce of the band's late 1990s commercial peak. [Sep 2008, p.99]

What little humanity Colder once possessed has been erased. [Jul 2005, p.96]

While he recreates his past modes, he can't recapture the audacious conceits or raptures of Liberation and Promenade. [Jul 2006, p.90]

Without DFA tricknology to enliven their mix, they struggle with monotony over the course of an album. [Mar 2005, p.94]

The emotional distance in their music is hard to bridge. [Jun 2006, p.126]

Shadowed by a might past, in Ersatz GB, this is a strictly prefabricated Fall. [Dec 2011, p.82]

Elastic raps from Q-Tip and Spank Rock, plus some ballsy vocals at last from Rose Elinir Dougall, save the venture from total ignominy. [Oct 2010, p.105]

Two years of constant touring, countless festivals, a loss of a member (bassplayer Ira) and the addition of Gwen Stefani's producer, and something's gone awry.

Doesn't pack enough hooks to make it memorable. [Apr 2005, p.105]

Distinctly average. [Oct 2006, p.119]

For the most part, For Now is characterised by a lack of personality and charm. [Apr 2009, p.80]

While there's plenty of laidback sheen, the collection is void of original hooks. [Sep 2019, p.24]

All albums are vanity projects, but this vanity may be in vain. [Feb 2003, p.76]

[His] voice bulldozes everything in its path, flattening melody and obliterating nearly every sentiment on this overzealous album. [Feb 2018, p.24]

Here they often come across as Hard-Fi playing the songs of The New York Dolls--infinitely more irritating. [Nov 2007, p.104]

It's disappointing that nothing else on the record even enters the same solar system [as "1 Thing"]. [Aug 2005, p.92]

In among the glitch and twitch, however, lies the odd choice moment. [Nov 2005, p.114]