A few club chants ("You jump around like you ADHD! ADHD! ADHD!") and heavy beats crop up throughout but, in the main, N*E*R*D ironically struggle to break out of their own defined anything-goes freedom on what's just a solid record.

"The Beautiful Lie" isn't without its merits but their appearances are few and far between.

We'll take it any day over the bloated, self-important MOR of the Big Rap Stars (stand-up Nas) but hipster rap still has a way to go if it's to prove more than a passing fad.

So smooth nothing sticks, there's no guts, no depth and no matter how much he protests to the contrary, nothing to believe.

Emergency isn't quite the great leap that was expected but does at least carry a few optimistic signs for the future.

For a moment one can hear Mraz's real soul, rather than a factory-assembled version. Sadly, it's too little and too late to save this queasy record.

Throughout, Southampton's own R Kelly, as silky-voiced as ever, seems determined to seize hold of his iffy image and re-establish his old school soul credentials.

Santogold, then, is a great 21st century cut and paste pop record: self-conscious, referential and catchy as hell. Buy it, love it...then chuck it away and buy a newer model.

She's got an album which for all its sing-along moments is neither catchy nor extreme enough to be exceptional.

At times here, The Kooks are far too easily confused with their peers--the Fratellis' riff on 'Stormy Weather' and Arctic Monkeys' intro to 'Down To The Market'--the band struggle to stamp their own identity on proceedings.

Though their efforts to keep the flame of rock'n'roll burning bright are to be applauded, the feeling that the real standard bearers are tuning up elsewhere is impossible to shrug off.

Two things save Los Campesinos! from being utterly insufferable. The first is that many of these songs are such fun, hurtling from the speakers in a blur of fuzzy guitars, big shouty choruses and smart vocal jousting between singers Gareth and Alexsandra. The second saving grace is that Los Campesinos! have the brains to back up their smart arse attitude.

Great fun to record, no doubt, and probably great live, but an annoying conceit on record.

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 interesting theme doesn't last.

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 good clean fun, entertaining and inoffensive.

It's almost like neither [Dave Fridmann] nor the band could decide whether they were making an electronic or rock record and in dithering between the two settled on the awkward, frustrating middle ground.

Matinee is quite good; but 50 years on from the birth of rock'n'roll, quite good just isn't really good enough anymore.

The Black And White Album feels less like a fresh start than the end of something.

Red Carpet Massacre is largely just a ham-fisted example of what happens when fame, ego and squandered major label cash equate to a sad, missed opportunity.

Blackout is business as usual. Courting publicity more shamelessly than that infamous kiss with Madonna, Britney writhes, moans and generally gives good pillow talk for the duration of an album where crunk, glitches, squeaks and clubbed-up beats dominate.

The results are hit-and-miss.

Oblivion With Bells is a competent record and, it must be said, far stronger than the most recent releases by '90s contemporaries The Prodigy or The Chemical Brothers.

Wham, bam, rock and glam, it's Marshall stacks turned up to 11 and Kelly riffing away in the steps of a heap of bands who do it better.

Trouble is, despite the band's concerted efforts to beef up and broaden their schtick with a radio-friendly production, too many aspects scream "novelty act".

Sometimes it's almost too much "classic Springsteen"; too many songs seem like retreads.

The self-produced Beyond The Neighbourhood balances its meat and veg indie with enough electronic textures and hip hop beats to (sort of) catch the ear.