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]