The Dreaming Room is an enormously frustrating record, as Mvula clearly has it in her to be an incredible artist. But at this point in her career, she remains a orchestra in need of a conductor.

At its best, Roaring 20s is clumsy and awkward. At its worst, it’s hectoring and condescending.

[An] offensively dull record.

Enter Shikari have the tools and drive to create something potentially mind-blowing, it’s just that they fell well short of the mark on this occasion.

The whole exercise seems so carefully crafted and desperately needy that any joy found within The Weight Of Your Love wears off the more you play it.

Most of Welcome Reality is so in your face and predictable it feels like the musical equivalent of a Michael Bay movie: loud, crass, periodically fun, but ultimately forgettable.

It’s not that Nihilistic Glamour Shots is some objectively terrible record, but it’s certainly not a great one. The music isn’t minimal, it’s mundane, a songwriting stodge that seems content to play in its own filth.

The first half of the album is particularly monotonous, with the one-man band fervently spewing similar hooks that show very little dynamism and only serve a purpose to maintain a foot tapping rhythm.

Her history and significance is rooted in rebellion--but that’s easy to overlook with a record this diluted.

Unfocused, inconsistent and underwhelming, The Heavy Entertainment Show is homogenised pop at its most stupefying.

Candy’s uncompromising approach has been a breath of fresh air when providing guest verses in the past, but a whole album of pornographic paeans will leave you feeling limp.

Moments of the Jacknife Lee-produced album are assured--Gary Lightbody over-emotes particularly well on the maudlin "Life-ning" and "The Symphony" is rightfully pompous--but the uneasy truth is that Snow Patrol are merely background dinner party music for accountants.

It’s clear that Coldplay retain their thirst, their passion for making music--it’s merely a shame that it results in such polite noises.

Some may find something deep and spiritual amongst the cuts on Outside, but it just makes this reviewer want to stay indoors.

It's not completely unfair to say that Déjà Vu won't be joining the pantheon of great albums any time soon.

Pharrell isn’t raising the game on G I R L--it’s a thoughtful, imaginative unit-shifter with some sincere themes running through it. But “different”? Not quite.

Unlike the release of his second studio album, KIRK released last year, a major fraction of 'Blame It On Baby' lacks effort and even originality.

Tracks like ‘Feeling Good, Feeling Great’, ‘High’ and ‘Guillotine’ feel soulless and lack the gusto that DZ Deathrays have shown through their live shows and previous releases. Albeit brief, there are glimmers in which the duo capture the visceral and angsty essence of their past through the tribal ‘Back _ Forth’ and closer ‘Witchcraft Pt. II’.

Despite these few fleeting moments of greatness, Everything Now feels like the band's first missfire record of their career, with its lack of a focused concept, cohesiveness and heart.

So many of the risks taken are either unevocative or plain annoying, particularly when the tracks are structured with so little sense of development.

Tracing the lush synth lines running through this album shows Epworth’s love affair with the retro electronics of the 1980s. But their pairing with the sensibilities of modern pop ends up feeling less like the 80s, and more like last decade’s 80s nostalgia.

For all its best intentions, Man of the Woods often feels rushed, occasionally underproduced and at times, unfinished. Lacking the effortless polish of previous releases, it troughs more than peaks and ends up floundering in its own ambition.

Predictably pristine, ultimately inessential.

It feels staid, played out, and more than a little boring; despite Ashcroft’s pleas for energy, it feels absolutely zonked out, the wire-thin production helmed by the songwriter himself.

Krept and Konan end up sounding like features on their own songs.