Naïve, twee, lacking imagination and pointlessly derivative on one hand but - with summer on the horizon and given a forgiving mood – this is also sunny, carefree and great background music to waft over your BBQ.

"9" picks up where the ubiquitous and two-million selling "O" left off. Hoarse howling to acoustic guitar strumming; folksy plucking to bleeding heart mutterings; Radiohead-a-like moments pull of portentous, look-at-me pauses and full band crescendos.

As a collection of songs it tentatively experiments with genres and musical devices so as to appear less of the poor man's B-sides of its predecessor; but at the same time daren't stray too far from the blueprint that made the quartet such a loveable bunch of rogues in the first place.

The production is lame, and the album as a whole is unconvincing in it's pretences as hi-energy, bouncy and above all youthful punk. And Dexter Holland's vocals simply grate after a while. Die-hard Offspring fans will find nothing which deviates from the original plot, so they won't lose any long-term believers from this offering.

Hot Hot Heat's religious devotion to early eighties new wave is simply embarrassing.

His records are not without merit and the better songs here more than deserve to find sizable audiences. But there's no sign that music is going to ever be anything more than an enjoyable sideline for a man whose greatest art continues to be created in other mediums.

While 'Shaman' is less than the sum of its parts and strays into AOR territory too much to ever truly be cutting edge, despite its R&B and Latin infusions, it will, at least in America, sell by the truckload.

Mainly, though, this is a terribly weary album, tedious when it strives to be seditionary, trading on utterly devalued notions of attitude and aggression.

While going reggae was always going to be risky, it's the severe lack of conviction - whether in Burgess's mumblings or songs general vagueness - that's the biggest problem.

Only by The Night will undoubtedly sell bucketloads but there's no escaping the fact that creatively, Kings Of Leon have stalled.

Sprawled over 13 tracks, The Cure have attempted a microcosm of their oeuvre in one volume and despite their lofty ambitions, the results are a decidedly mixed bag at best.

However much electro trickery he has at his fingertips, he needs some songs first.

Its ambitions far exceed its ideas, and the record is sunk by the kind of sonic bloat normally reserved for self-regarding sophomore releases.

It wasn't disco-pop and it wasn't chart-fodder, and sadly for them--and their label--attempts to make them so with the help of Rick Rubin has resulted in a record that sounds similar to the last but with the heart ripped out.

If this fluffy, punk-lite petulance, devoid of any real personality is to your taste, lap it up.

If it were anyone else, this record would be fine. Solid. Entertaining. But it's not anyone else--Julian Casablancas, lead singer of The Strokes. As such, you look for more and expect to tune in to find Julian doing the same.

At various times on …Love Revolution, Lenny just doesn't cut it as a songwriter, a lead guitarist (don't even go there), a string arranger and, above all, a drummer. But the man can sing and for that much we, and he, should be grateful.

It's effective, not good. More tellingly, it's catchy in spite of Ke$ha, not because of her.

Why the hell is Ronson being applauded as a wunderkind for basically recycling big beat and hiring some horns?

For the lovers, this patchy album offering moderate advance on its immediate predecessors will probably suffice. But in truth it's an unmitigated failure to reconcile the sound of their past with a cohesive vision of their future.

Bloated, culturally inconsequential and decidedly average, the net result is a band getting far too high on an over-inflated sense of self-importance to the deafening chimes of cash registers the world over.

Perhaps the only interesting thing about Manson's latest record is the couple of anomalies hidden within.

Collaborations with Helicopter Girl on 'Don't Come Around Here', with Macy Gray on 'Smitten' and the loving if overproduced take on of Curtis Mayfield's 'It Was Love That We Needed' stand out as highlights but only because the rest of this collection comes with the words 'will this do' burned deeply into its flabby, bovine arse.

Overlong and oversexed, Futuristically Speaking... stumbles where you will it to stride; something surprisingly staid and mediocre from extraordinary circumstances.

The production, however, is first rate, Dre proving that he really is on fire at the moment. Eminem's microphone skills are similarly beyond question ' though a little too shouty on occasion. It's just that his self-indulgent and irritatingly stupid rants will prove too much for any audience that recognises irony in Beavis and Butthead.

These songs don't sound anxious, or troubled, just lacklustre.

Her bland-o-meter appears to be well and truly busted.

When you don't have the fun of playing spot-the-steal, all you're left with are wishy washy pastiches and a sense of growing fatigue.