The results sound like an update of the kind of AOR racket Pat Benatar and Heart were making in the '80s. [Nov 2007, p.116]

His vechile of expression alternates between acoustic confessional and clapped-out pub rock, leaving Dangerfield pootling down the middle of a fairly nondescript road. [Feb 2010, p.81]

The endless drug references now seem calculating rather than risque, while the daft lyrics simply grate. [Apr 2006, p.106]

Bob Rock's big production ladles on the reverb, merely emphasizing hollowness at the core. [Dec 2011, p.81]

Surely the last flogging of a heavily Photoshopped horse. [Apr 2010, p.100]

With every element wound so tight, the relentless pace grows exhausting over the long haul. [Jul 2010, p.108]

A curiously uninvolving affair. [Jun 2004, p.95]

She's all suffocating style, no sweat. [Nov 2004, p.99]

For anyone else, Going Back is a heartfelt but pointless exercise in ersatz soul. [Nov 2010, p.84]

Sees them attempt the same move The Charlatans made with their last LP, but less successfully. [Jul 2003, p.111]

The trio only really let loose on their sprawling, wailing cover of Jonathan Richman's "Don't Let Your Youth Go To Waste." [Feb 2006, p.86]

It's all very well intended, but seldom rises above the superficial. [Dec 2008, p.108]

Too often they sound like Sting fronting Counting Crows. [Jul 2009, p.93]

Far too many songs here are conducted in a mid-pace. [Jun 2010, p.90]

This follow-up tries too hard to prolong the high. [Apr 2009, p.80]

He sounds like a man lost amid his own vast record collection. [June 2003, p.109]

The music, though lithe and limber in a jazz-fusion-funk bag, lacks melodic distinction, while the vocals are delivered in a variety of electronically treated styles that are irritating at first and increasingly so on repeated exposures. [Feb 2002, p.125]

This treads the thin line between appealing whimsy and finicky, smartypants noodling. [Jun 2007, p.111]

Too often there's a pileup of overwrought, over-long ballads that struggle to make headway. [Jan 2005, p.121]

This eponymous effort does little to dispel the notion that he's a bit of a swaggering caricature. [Jan 2002, p.142]

Even a nice take-off of moody Pharrell-style R&B, "Gangsters Want To Cuddle Me", and a rap by Adam Green can't save Dark Touches from being fairly irritating. [Nov 2009, p. 88]

The fault lies in the lightweight material. [Feb 2011, p.84]

Based around some laughably accurate and truly entertaining pastiches of artists including Bjork, Bowie and the Pixies, the rest of the album is pure filler. [Aug 2003, p.100]

Coombes and Goffey undoubtedly had fun romping through "Queen Bitch," or tackling "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)" in the style of The Zombie, but you'll never play this album more than once. [Apr 2010, p.91]

Basically Big Talk is how The Killers might sound if, rather than combining Bruce Springsteen and the Pet Shop Boys, they settle for blending Kings of Leon with ELO. [Sep 2011, p.79]

This is too timid for modern R&B, too bland to rival Blige, and won't halt the sharp decline since 2003's "Rock Wit U." [Sep 2008, p.110]

As a studio album it's dull and rather pointless. [Dec 2008, p.116]

Their latest was recorded in Berlin and Iceland, with whichever musicians were around at the time, lending Newcombe's whacked-out psychedelia cum space/drone rock a stoned-jam feel that doesn't always work to the songs' advanatge. [Apr 2010, p.83]

It's primitive, geezerish stuff but lacks, say, the finesse and humour of contemporary Mike Skinner's work. [Oct 2005, p.112]

Coming from a former punk goof, all this sentimentality feels somewhat po-faced. [Jul 2006, p.84]

Why, when Dragonforce are doing this for real? [May 2007, p.96]

For Barlow stalwarts only. [Mar 2003, p.100]

There's a flightiness that lends the album a showreel quality. [Apr 2005, p.97]

Preparations smudges the distinction between Herren's Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas aliases, and shares with Golden Pollen, his summer S&S release, a listless drift. [Dec 2007, p.101]

Soundwise, Chinese Democracy is all over the place.

This is pretty gloomy going, not rendered much easier by the lugubrious baritone in which Beck delivers his emotional autopsies, or the vague, amorphous melodies. [Nov 2002, p.116]

Their brand of gut-wrenching emo, aligned to fearsome fantasy rock remains both wildly overcooked and deeply derivative. [Jun 2013, p.79]

A collection of vanilla indie-pop that paints a portrait of a group clinging on rather than pushing forward. [Jul 2013, p.73]

Little more than a bunch of B-sides in search of a point. [Mar 2004, p.87]

This seems geared for maximum market penetration rather than songwriting excellence. [Jan 2008, p.91]

Beefy but unremarkable debut album. [Sep 2011, p.105]

His cluttered beatscapes suggest random sounds in search of a meaning. [Mar 2006, p.103]

It's tasteful, but not much more. [Feb 2007, p.78]

The Pigeon Detectives' second in a year smacks of too much haste and too little thought. [June 2008, p.98]

This follow-up is a lackluster affair. [Sep 2009, p.95]

The first half's schmaltzy flight-themed concept and the cliche-stewn acoustic second half mean that take-off, to labour an already laboured concept, proves indefinitely delayed. [Sep 2011, p.105]

The truth is, this is actually rather safe music. [Apr 2008, p.94]

Youth Novels attampts to repeat the trick [the single 'Little Bit'] 13 more times, with varying degrees of sucess. [July 2008, p.103]

Altogether lacking... is the crisp production that powered early hits like "Boo!", replaced by a rather unremarkable R&B job. [Nov 2005, p.94]

The likes of "The West End" and "Thinking About You" are unobjectionable, but mostly have the effect of reminding that there are Steve Earle albums you could be playing. [Nov 2010, p.94]

Portentous electronic rock made for audiences that stretch out as far as the eye can see, and choruses pilfered from a mid-'80s installment of Now That's What I Call Music! [Sep 2013, p.97]

Adele is repeatedly cast as the heartbroken survivor. That role serves to foreground her mighty impressive vocals, but also encourage the showboating overkill that is a staple of the X Factor generation. [Feb 2011, p.79]

Only on "Faces" and the concluding "Poolside" does the stifling fug of rock'n'pop traditionalism lift a little bit. [Jul 2010, p.108]

Buffed to a hyper-compressed, anodyne sheen by John McLaughlin, The Fountain is so craven in its bid for airplay it even includes an insipid number called "Drivetime". [Nov 2009, p.84]

Padded out with too much of the Europap that has blotted Perfecto's scoresheet over the years. [Jul 2002, p.116]

Shapeshifter features mostly stockpiled instrumental pieces characteristically driven by Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. [Jul 2012, p.82]

The execution is consistently weak. [Aug 2013, p.79]

For the most part, Ben Kweller simply suggests Jackson Browne reared on Weezer. [Oct 2006, p.114]

[Has] an uninspiring production line-up. [Jul 2006, p.101]

Maybe they should have bigger ambitions. [Spe 2009, p.79]

Feels for the most part like a vanity side project from Beyonce's solo career. [Jan 2005, p.115]

Famous First Words passes by amiably enough, like a TV clip-show but is eerily without a sense of place, time or even quirk to make you believe in it. [Sep 2011, p.98]

The tunes are so fragmentary, it resembles a '60s hi-fi demonstration disc. [Jul 2005, p.89]

Deft guitar lines from Charlie Burgess never quite paper over the cracks in numbers that would have been consigned to b-sides in the band's heyday. [Jun 2009, p.101]

In danger of becoming a Loose Tubes for the ATp generation, this once fleetfooted group have blundered into a vat of fudge. [Feb 2010, p.89]

The band utilise new instruments--saxophone, brass and more--in a too-blantant attempt to convince us that they are more than goths. [Aug 2009, p.101]

Beneath the opulent layers and studio tweaks, however, lie some very orthodox, very average Eighties indie songs. [Mar 2002, p.96]

The result is four meandering tracks. [Feb 2012, p.89]

From there [after the title track and 'Out of Dreams'], though, the tunes disappear into a black hole of generic Liverpudlian guitar pop. [July 2008, p.100]

Puny production and fey, knowing, songwriting provide little to hook the attention. [Nov 2009, p.88]

This injection-moulded pastiche isn't exactly bad, but feels totally pointless. [Jul 2011, p.86]

A mish-mash of tracks from or intended for film soundtracks, is mearly more of the same with added strings. [Sep 2008, p.109]

The first six tracks or so of Stone Love are as good a soundtrack to summer as you're likely to get this year... Thereafter it's an interminable sea of coma-inducing ballads. [Sep 2004, p.104]

The drawback, as ever, is Blunt’s warbly, whining, strangled voice, which sounds increasingly like a bad Weird Al Yankovic parody.

They haven't yet shown enough thrills in righteousness to challenge gangsta's dark, easy attraction. [Nov 2002, p.129]

There are some pleasantly elaborate, wayward songs here... Forays into funk and Tom Waits' scrapyard are cringe-inducing, though. [Sep 2004, p.110]

The result is exhausting, an album of songs that all want to be showstoppers. [Dec 2011, p.86]

The dream-logic mixing is a strength, where folk songs from Adele Diane and Songs Of Green Pheasant tumble to the forefront, but most tracks are limp, effete and boring. [Mar 2015, p.84]

Here Lies Love could do with a lot less reportage and a great deal more drama, melody and wit. If anything, with morem not less, artistsic licence. [Mar 2010, p.99]

Deeply average. [Apr 2004, p.91]

Their one great idea grows tiresome over an album's length. [Oct 2010, p.88]

While something could have been made of the contrast between Francis's keening howl and Paley's guttural slur, proceedings are let down by the songs. [Oct 2011, p.95]

Producer Jari Haapalainen successfully blends it all together, but Karolina Komstedt's vacant vocals remian glacially unmoved. [Jul 2010, p.104]

Too one-speed to attain the subtlety of Zep, too constipated to really funk out. [Oct 2006, p.99]

An utterly gloomungous affair with barely a crack of light piercing the lowering clouds of misery. [Jan 2004, p.116]

The thing with the L-event EP is that across four tracks, there isn't the room afforded on their best LPs for something resembling accessibility. [Nov-Dec 2013, p.100]

Maybe it's not Albini's fault that El Rey lacks the melodic thrust of earlier projects, but this is wiry, unappealing fare. [July 2008, p.114]

It's unlikely comfort is their aim, but that's the effect oif this over-familiar blend of woozy disaffection and slow-burning sensuality. [Apr 2010, p.83]

Not quite criminal, but close. [Jul 2012, p.84]

Unfortunately, every note is so restrained as to verge on the apologetic, resulting in songs capable of being forgotten even while they're playing. [Oct 2009, p.101]

Seems an innocuous exercise in regurgitation rather than innovation. [Dec 2002, p.131]

Their third album sees them toughening up some, with much of their whimsical dreaminess tramped underfoot in their seeming desire to become a more conventional, NME-friendly, rock band. [Feb 2006, p.81]

They rather more resemble the wilfully over-wrought pastiches of Flight Of The Conchords, but without the jokes. [Sep 2009, p.82]

The sing-along antics of the home crowd can be a little irritating. [Aug 2002, p.107]

A lush but unthrilling album. [Nov 2003, p.122]

Much of it seems to bluster without delivering. [Aug 2005, p.87]

The quartet are once again playing it safe with their crowd-pleasing formula of surging riffs, queasily memorable choruses and lyrics which, like Mystic Meg horoscopes burn with portent while saying nothing. [Dec 2011, p.96]

The vast majority of it still sounds like what it was: cerebral, bloodless 'dance' music for junkies, the kind of posturing Gotham tripe we used to describe as "atonal" and "angular." [Aug 2003, p.120]