She fails to stand out in a crowded marketplace. [Feb 2013, p.79]

Far the best things here are the relatively restrained title track and the acoustic ballad "Die Trying." Elsewhere, it's the stodgy gruel of yore. [Oct 2016, p.37]

Julia Shapiro and Bree McKenna's vocals are brash and bratty, and there's no doubt that they'd be great fun live, but over 13 songs and half an hour, the jokes get pretty laboured. [Nov 2015, p.72]

Air and Zero 7 are perhaps the nearest reference points. [Dec 2001, p.106]

On cutesy likes of "King And Lionheart," they're closer in spirit to the plague of emoters loosed upon the world by the success of Mumford & Sons. [Sep 2012, p.81]

Mostly these dry, derivative, rather dreary songs of endeavour are a hard slog. [Jun 2015, p.84]

Breakup Song is all right, but ultimately, it's an unnecessary listen. [Nov 2012, p.72]

As ever, the technical chops are indisputable--but it does, with fewer brains on board, feel somehow less substantial. [Nov 2019, p.22]

A New Found Relaxation promises much but never fully delivers. [Aug 2020, p.33]

This painful exercise in manufactured soul-baring Is a genuinely grim proposition. [Apr 2012, p.82]

It's the usual earnestly proficient, blandly yearning fare, every song a Hallmark valentine set to a John Lewis Christmas advertisement. [Nov 2016, p.35]

Too busy with ideas for its own good. [Jun 2014, p.76]

Much of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy is content to sit, lost in a maze of Echoplex, navigating its own navel. [Nov 2013, p.81]

[The] rather slight songs raise the suspicion you would get more out of listening to Clinic's record collection than the band themselves. [Oct 2012, p.68]

American Soul is more rewarding than Phil Collins' recent album of Motown covers, but is ultimately defined by a similar sense of futility. [Dec 2012, p.72]

When they succeed, it's on more traditional Pumpkins territory. ... Otherwise, Cyr sounds like an underwhelming misadventure. [Jan 2021, p.32]

For the most part, Laugh Now, Cry Later plays like an unsuccessful attempt to regain hood status. [Sep 2006, p.86]

A disappointing triumph of retro-goth style over substance. [Jul 2013, p.80]

DM's production is unfocused but showy and the album's postmodern lurches suggest a frustrating attention defecit disorder. [Jun 2006, p.90]

It is difficult, however, to detect any Latin influence upon what is another collection of lilting, lulling Joni Mitchell Pastiches pitched largely between winsome and the twee. [Aug 2017, p.37]

Idlewild throw together plenty of ideas--without much cohesion. [May 2019, p.29]

Only when she reels off her thank-yous at the end- a list as interminable as an Oscars speech - does she sound remotely happy. [July 2002, p.120]

A solid, by-the-numbers Billy Idol album. And that is both its triumph and its tragedy. [Apr 2005, p.99]

This is songwriting with a stunning paint job, but with its training wheels still on. [Nov 2014, p.71]

Are You Alone? hints at a Blue Nile-like melancholy beauty; otherwise the album could be prescribed as a treatment for insomnia. [Dec 2015, p.74]

The songs' relative lack of eccentricity makes CocoRosie seem oddly run-of-the-mill. [Apr 2020, p.25]

It's less derivative than some current house revivalists, and perfect wallpaper for independent coffee shops, but you can't really get down to such studiousness. [Jan 2015, p.74]

Guitarist Hugh Harris can still finesse a scintillating riff, but derivative would-be hipster anthems with hip-hop bolt-on "Around Town" and "It Was London" suggest a band aware that their time has come, and gone. [Oct 2014, p.74]