This is an album rich in feminine delicacy and woodsy magic, but ultimately Campbell will remain far too fey for many.

Time and time again, this patchy album is dragged down by obscenely flashy production, a surfeit of ideas that conspire only to sabotage the songs themselves and writ large across it all, Fyfe Dangerfield's interminable, platitudinous emoting.

The problem lies in the fact that The Stooges have nothing left to say.

Mostly though this is bland Hollywood fodder masquerading as something more.

An incredibly accomplished record, a true testament to the band’s imagination, intellectual curiosity and outrageous musical talent.... Unfortunately, “Frances The Mute” is also awful.

It is one thing to not take yourself to seriously but it is quite another to go to the other extreme. For all his knowing winks, Green walks the fine line between decadency and distaste.

Drum and Bass dons Noisia have been roped in on production duties and they've put a fair deal of weight into tracks that might otherwise have sounded flat.

Overall you're left with the aural equivalent of an unexpectedly comfy bed in a cheap hotel--relaxing, welcoming, unexpectedly pleasant, but eminently forgettable.

In the long, twisted canon of break-up albums, Everett doesn't only miss the mark, but makes arguably the first serious misstep of his career.

Many of the tracks (including "Positive Tension" and "This Modern Love") are so choppy and discontinuous as to give you the same nauseous feeling you get when you hear a Mars Volta record.

This CD will sell solely on Eminem's four contributions, which include the uncommonly restrained current single 'Lose Yourself'.

If you can manage to put such quibbles aside--and it will be a struggle--Light After Dark has some redeeming features.

Problem is, much of this record is just Game keeping up with the Joneses: everything you'd expect from a 2008 rap album is here (Lil' Wayne guest spot; boring, '80s-styled Kanye track), and the stuff that makes him unique seems harder than ever to get at.

As the title suggests, this album is - deliberately, you feel - a thwarted pleasure, any sweetness and warmth being spiked with discordance and bitterness.

He can't seem to decide whether he wants to make a straightforward hip-hop remix of Jay-Z's tunes, quirky sampladelia like DJ Steinski or Coldcut, or an avant-garde project in the vein of plunderphonic composers John Oswald and Negativland. A lot of the time, he falls awkwardly between the three camps.

It's just hard to find much of Jeff himself in these amiable, head-nod-friendly, immaculately crafted but ever so slightly sterile tracks.

The overriding impression is that “The Documentary” could be the biggest fanboy album of all time... and that The Game, as much as he thinks he’s a player, is being played by others far more powerful than himself.

Ultimately, on the strength of The Golden Mile, the longevity of The Peth seems, at best, questionable.

The Charlatans have cottoned on to the electro-is-back wave, but not in a cool, Spank Rock or New Young Pony Club sense, but a magpie parody, a homage.

Lopez mostly sticks to a successful formula - R&B lite with a Latin touch.

It's not that Foxx can't sing.... It's not even really the lack of stunning songs. It's the fact that his super slick, super smooth R&B hasn't been either cool or fashionable for more than a decade.

Robbed of any arch qualities they might previously have hinted at, Art Brut are shown up as cuddly pop-comedians happy to tell the same joke over and over, devoid of any real insight and normal to the extent that you half-expect Argos to launch into a diatribe against aeroplane food.

A bitterly disappointing, lacklustre album that is sadly short of distinct memories of any kind.

Lower your expectations a level and there's a decent enough rock album; tight, stylistically roughed-up and actually sounding much more like The Libertines than you expect.

Most of the tracks here could be Pavement, so those looking for a diversion will be disappointed. Those looking for another Pavement record for their collection will be less so, but ultimately this sounds like a hurried release and more of an extension of the past than an indication of the future.

It’s not Razorlight’s reflected experience that’s the problem, though, nor their clichéd rock‘n’roll romanticism - it’s the bewildering narrowness of their sonic vision.

Uncle Dysfunktional won't compel a new generation to discover the back catalogue or question the popular depiction of the Mondays as cartoonish buffoons.

With personnel changes and a series of guest artists the names of which ever-increasingly overshadow whatever actual sounds they're making, Massive Attack have fought a continual struggle to surpass 1994's 'Protection'.