Things go downhill as petty vindictiveness and insignificant beefs become the preferred themes. [Jan 2006, p.114]

it's full of lovely moments, but it nees more edge to keep you from snoozing. [Apr 2008, p.91]

The music is classifed as country, but it's really clinical pop, enlivened by Swift's confessional lyrics. [Apr 2009, p.101]

The tunes can be slight, and sometimes their spirit of appropriation leaves them rather red-handed. [Apr 2011, p.91]

"Whiskey, Wine And Ham" is the only track that really pops, enlivened by a rare burst of classic Ryderese. Otherwise it's slim pickings from men a long way past their prime. [Aug 2017, p.25]

The lurch towards conventionality has exposed Isis' limitations: their paucity of melodic ideas, the pompous drumming, the lack of wit or soul. [Jan 2007, p.100]

The lo-fi production makes everything sound like an unfinished demo, the songs are largely forgettable and the AutoTune’d vocals become a little tedious.

His is a paradoxical, somewhat clean version of grime, pushing every commercial button to boost his product. [Mar 2011, p.101]

Aside from sime sly gender-bending and lovable kitsch, there just isn't much interpretive room to roam. [Aug 2009, p.105]

The fifth and final Streets albums suffers as a result of his self-imposed exile from the hubbub he once chronicled with such verve. [Mar 2011, p.101]

Korn are too lumpen to handle 'sophisticated.' [Jan 2006, p.102]

Many of their songs go on for weeks, doing little but reiterating banal refrains, badly confusing hypnotic with merely repetitious. [Nov 2007, p.96]

It's lush, detailed, frequently over-rich, but Fabricius' bright, perky voice and some generically kooky lyrics can't really carry the weight of the whole production. [Aug 2011, p.94]

It's Krall's voice that has always been her biggest problem... consequently, these songs feel like elegant but bloodless conceits. [Jun 2004, p.85]

This conservative collection feels more like musical air freshener than any kind of statement. [Dec 2007, p.104]

You'd be hard pressed to find anything to summon the blood and stiffen the sinew among the 14 songs on offer here. [Mar 2007, p.90]

Her passion may be sincere, but the songs are a mixed bag. [July 2008, p.108]

The rest is country-tinged "roots-rock" fare, dispatched with an irritatingly blokeish. [Aug 2011, p.100]

Pretty, but pretty vacant. [Aug 2004, p.102]

These languid strums would sound suitably fine and mellow stoned on a beach at sunset. [May 2005, p.95]

The album's ersatz old school mode inevitably pales when judged against the revolutionary Flash asides. [Mar 2009, p86]

Where there was once ragged glory there is now only a sort of bludgeoning earnestness which, as in the nine-minute "Goin' Home," blusters a lot to little effect. [May 2002, p.108]

Whether you love or hate The Research will depend upon your tolerance for cheap keyboards. [Mar 2006, p.103]

A couple of sweaty, sybaritic slowjams prove that his libido hasn't waned, but his mojo undoubtedly has. [Oct 2007, p.101]

Occasionally they break from formula, but the tired beats and repetitive rhymes ensure Double Bubble would have even a Full Moon Party shaking their heads. [Sep 2008, p.104]

Music For Confluence lacks imagination and dynamic, with gentle fuzz and weak violin failing to conjure any sort of atmosphere. [Jan 2012, p.81]

Throughout, there's an ungainly combination of the leaden and the jaunty. [Aug 2009, p.102]

This is departure lounge pop--antiseptic, pleasant, with Photoshopped pics of exotic locales scattered around, but none of the hedonism of actually being there. [May 2011, p.82]

The result is strangely enervating. [Aug 2008, p.103]

Aside from [Interpol]... the Yes groups sound just as narrow and constricted as their scuzzy East Village forebears. [Aug 2003, p.120]

A curiously anemic listen. [Feb 2006, p.78]

It's more accessible than that lute album, but -barring the sole Sting composition, the lovely "The Hounds Of Winter" - it will baffle all but the hardiest Police fan. [Jan 2010, p. 126]

The band seem to have suffered a who-are-we?-style mid-life crisis. [Jan 2007, p.100]

Fairly generalised misogyny pervades the album, though it would be churlish not to not that tracks like "White Trash Party" or "On Fire" both display flashes of Eminem's wit. [Sep 2010, p.92]

[It's] a kind of remedial emo-psych-rock, where dunderheaded riffs meet go-nowhere spurts of electronics, while ponderous guitar shadows equally ponderous keys. [Mar 2013, p.68]

Like most big pop groups, they're great at singles--Rodney Jerkins' 'When I Grow Up' fashionably disses fame-- but fail when it comes to albums. [Dec 2008, p.115]

Something of a let-down. [May 2003, p.98]

For some of the mercifully brief 33 minutes and 43 seconds of this album there is some merit in the messiness of this L.A. four-piece's palette of punk powerchords and sustained hoarseness. [Jan 2008, p.88]

Predictably, Slash is most at home snuck behind Kid Rock and Iggy Pop, and accompanying Lemmy's below on "Doctor's Alibi." [Jun 2010, p.98]

Their formula--downtuned guitar, chunky rhythms, serial killer vocals--is proven, but ugly enough that it'll only resonate with fans. [Sep 2010, p.96]

Release Me feels like the soundtrack to a Josie And The Pussycats sequel unlikely to be made. [Sep 2010, p.96]

The Mooney Suzuki are NYC's retro-homage to America's spandex pop-metal scene. [Sep 2004, p.98]

Much of it signifies nothing. [May 2005, p.96]

Fairly mundane. [Aug 2006, p.86]

It's audacious stuff, but emotionally unengaging, with the lyrics being the weakest link and those songs remaining ultimately elusive. [Sep 2010, p.99]

Their rather timid approximation of prog lacks the charisma or gravitas required to persuade listeners that theirs is a cosmic expedition worth joining. [Sep 2008, p.100]

Rather desperately impersonates The Killers. [Mar 2006, p.94]

RoadKillOvercoat fattens his usual oblique rhymes into even more demanding, bombastic forms. [Apr 2007, p.93]

Her lyrics lack both Wino's wit and realism, and her orchestral-pop backdrops are pallid. [Feb 2008, p.89]

It's the no-frills productions like 'Not As We' which stand out, although these are marred by the lyrics--a mess of self-help-manual platitudes and environmentally minded bollocks. [July 2008, p.104]

The View's handicap is the sheer lumpen ordinariness of their songwriting. [Apr 2011, p.100]

It's a grim assemblage of cliche from the title downwards. [Feb 2011, p.90]

Yes, Beck was always unpredictable, but this is one weirdly unfocused album. [May 2010, p.83]

The four tracks involving [Lopes] are superb.... Elsewhere, they audibly struggle. [Jan 2003, p.119]

American show "Saturday Night Live" has a tradition of creating comedy heroes we don't quite get in the UK. Alongside Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell we can add The Lonely Island--essentially Flight Of The Conchords with more sperm jokes. [May 2009, p.91]

This is the sound of dashboard-tapping, local radio MOR. [Apr 2004, p.108]

An album characterised by comically overwrought anthems and production-line lyrics. [May 2017, p.26]

In the ugliest way possible Invaders Must Die shows that the Prodigy have still got it.

Even the proficient production of Trevor Horn can do nothing to perk things up. [Nov 2003, p.114]

The result is a confusing confection that plays out like "Anti-Capitalism: The Musical." [Jan 2009, p.96]

Overall the record has the pleasantly hobbyish but inessential air of a gap year vanity project. [Jul 2007, p.103]

The musicianship is slick enough, but if you thought their salt-of-the-earth fiddly folkie pose was a bit iffy, this is a whole new level of phoney. [Apr 2011, p.89]

The result is earworms aplenty, but any angst feels airbrushed, the effect is rather like rlaxing to a mobile phone commercial. [Apr 2010, p.95]

We've heard too much of this before. [Jan 2003, p.119]

Amid snatches of skewed beauty, it seems Akron/Family have lost a sense of who they really are. [Dec 2006, p.101]

This is scant compensation for his lack of fire, lyrical inspiration, or indeed anything that might distinguish him from his legion of peers. [Mar 2008, p.85]

A mostly thin and needlessly morose album. [Jun 2002, p.108]

While the debut was full of witty, Sparksy songs, Yes, Virginia is awash with mawkishly earnest ballads that suggest Tori Amos after a spell at drama school. [May 2006, p.104]

Overall, however, the reaction is a resounding "Huh?" [May 2011, p.103]

Much of it is a coffee-table approximation of the producer duo's more irreverent work. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Without notable emotional heft, however, the identikit cool and sub-Lana Del Rey poses prove wearisome, the cloying artifice insubstantial. [May 2017, p.39]

Modish but strangely clinical. [Aug 2004, p.94]

Arcade Fire producer Craig Silvey and a slick session band sculpt an impressively spacey sound, but LaVere's self-conscious, bored voice strangles everything at birth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

It's a sweet-natured and seemingly uncynical exercise which, while pretty enough, brings nothing new to these well-worn ditties. [Jan 2012, p.101]

Snoop's patter soon descends into G-funk pastiche and cretinous misogyny. [Feb 2007, p.85]

All totally fine, of course, but next time a little passion and personality won't go amiss. [Jan 2012, p.103]

Their profoundly boring ninth album resembles sketches toward another unnecessary Stone Roses comeback. [May 2016, p.71]

Jackrabbit is two songs and three interludes of grandiose, tuneless narrative better suited to Broadway. [May 2015, p.80]

There are flashes of sublimity, but too often hideous flashbacks of Jethro Tull and ELO. [Jul 2004, p.102]

He can't muster much more than a compose-by-numbers Boards Of Canada kit that's destined for little more than wildlife documentary syndication. [Mar 2005, p.102]

Tries hard to add a few hues absent from Matchbox 20's colourless rock. [Jul 2005, p.90]

The dreary emotional content and the sub-MBV soundscapes set out to gaze enigmatically at their shoes. Sadly, they don't get past the navel. [dec 2008, p.115]

Al Jourgensen is bringing Ministry to a close, and truthfully, it's the right time. [Nov 2007, p.113]

It's occasionally very beautiful, but this is so far removed from values of immediacy and accessibility that Stevens' core audience are likely to be left non-plussed. [Dec 2009, p. 113]

You're left wondering quite what point she's trying to make. [Nov 2004, p.122]

Sadly, though, nothing on The Ting Tings debut album quite lives up to that promise [of 'That's Not My Name']. [June 2008, p.94]

The album is reliant on the Scene's female associates--like Lisa Lobsinger on the lovely Moroderish cosmic disco of "All To All"--to bring character to whtat remain some pretty hazy jams. [Jun 2010, p.83]

20 Y.O. is a lazy timewarp, not a retro treat. [Dec 2006, p.114]

Where MIA escapes the club and returns to the wider world, there's an overwhelming sense of diminishing returns. [Aug 2010, p.89]

Elsewhere, sluggish excursions in ambient pop and a commitment to melancholia that borders on the opppressive suggests that all those years grasping at the advertising dollar have left a taint of bland that won't scrub off. [Aug 2009, p.96]

Will Ozanne comes across as a milder version of James Blake. [Mar 2012, p.84]

Their 2002 debut was a surprising success, but Haunted Cities struggles to repeat the trick. [Sep 2005, p.100]

White is undoubtedly talented, but neither she nor her record company seem to know what to do with her. [July 2008, p.100]

Foul-mouthed, egocentric rhymes and nondescript beats. [Jun 2003, p.91]

The best you can say is that it's a great marketing ploy. [Dec 2005, p.112]

American Saturday Night has its fair share of hokum but proves that Paisley has a tough baritone voice and is a mean, bluesy guitarist. [Aug 2010, p.92]

While they sound no less vital than their infuriatingly profitable contemporaries, they sound no more, either. [Oct 2007, p.101]

Parts of the album are perfectly serviceable but largely the songs become indistinguishable. [May 2019, p.26]