Lopping off about twenty minutes would have improved things no end, but mostly it needs focus - focus that would probably have come with time.

So, we have a maturing Ms Lavigne, distancing herself from the teen antics of her "Let Go" debut, but struggling to find any stories worth telling save for boyfriend trouble and dead grandparents.

Hit and miss, then, but certainly brave and bold.

You certainly don't reject it outright though, not immediately, as almost every song at least knows the function of a chorus and everything has a glittery and palatable radiance, but such anodyne, airbrushed electro-pop leaves you searching for the magic ingredients.

Where the 'Farm break new ground is by exploring far more than the quiet-loud-rage-quiet formula with real singing and everything and a fair does of pop melody that place them more on a radio-friendly rock keel than no holds bared metal.

"Contraband" is "Appetite For Destruction" for grown-ups.

Track after track in an aimless blur of humming amps, pointless mucking about with effects, dreary jams propelled by meandering guitar interplay, and bleak, endless droning.

For long time observers though, the return of Tony Christie to the arena of mature balladry and lush production values will do plenty to gladden the heart.

An emotionally exhausting, sometimes excellent album.

This is the sound of Metallica drawing back into themselves and their history.

Large parts of this album sound as if designed specifically to be played to fields full of semi-comatose revellers.

A savvy, shiny, slyly sophisticated set of thoroughly modern dance floor exercises, it's the record we hoped Girls Aloud might make.

Amongst the glam rockers and the tender janglers, it seems that Beady Eye have simply written a Supergrass album. Let's see if Noel has an answer for that.

He still sounds temperamentally incapable of making a bad album, but he's made his first boring one.

The fact that experimental, abstract beats have become so popular is partly down to him, but now that everybody's doing it, he has to do it more, or better, or different.

She is at the top of her game, and hits it out of the park both concept-wise and musically.

The trio can't sustain this energy and inventiveness over the entire album.

We live in a Madonna world. And as long as she keeps releasing albums as vivid, relevant, distinctive and modern as this, we will for a some time yet.

It's good clean fun, entertaining and inoffensive.

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.

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.

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

As sleek and assured as anything the trio have done.

Perhaps the less successful tracks here might have been novel and fresh 15 years ago, but interest in library music and analogue synths was piqued long ago and some of Love 2 sounds like one example of many these days.

When he's left to his own devices, he appears to be on firing form, creating music that sits happily between the frenzied aggro mantras of his darkest days and the beautifully evocative wonder of his debut.

Fans of Aerosmith, and fans of good old Rock Music will love it.

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.

"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.

The problem is not that The Rakes haven't sought to evolve; it's that they've done so too self-consciously and slipped out of their depth.

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

If you didnt get 'U.F.Orb' or 'Orblivion', this ain't going to change your mind. If youve never heard The Orb before, though, this is as good an introduction as any.

A knack for woozy melodies is one weapon at Nicholls' disposal; but here they're fatally undermined both by his petulant vocal style and by the rickety, paper-thin production.

Meandering atmospheric intros and outros, with lyrics that often just repeat the same verse ad nauseum, overshadow what could be, at times, shorter, snappier songs.

There are a couple of moments where Hourglass works perfectly.

An average effort with hints of greatness.

It's by no means a bad album, just not his best by a long way, or the triumphant return it should have been.

Much of this album fails to engage.... There are lengthy attempts at covering too many bases, when fewer distractions would have allowed Cook to create music with direction, not just location and motion.

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.

“Mind Body & Soul” goes a long way to answering many of the questions her debut left hanging in the air, and most of them with a resounding ‘Yes’.

It's still very much a Mariah album--and a very slick and stylish one--with all the sweetness and swagger that entails.

A sultry dance album crammed with excellent tunes.

Kid Rock's sound rarely deviates from the explosive metal guitar rap synthesis he has made his trade mark...It is when Kid Rock strays from these familiar musical pastures that he gets into trouble, as in the case of 'Abortion', a rather pathetic attempt at soul...

This is a genuinely dreadful album.

It's all a show with Kings Of Leon, and there's nothing they yearn for more than the chance to exercise their sexual prowess.

If Circus had ended at eight songs, it would be a curveball pop classic but sadly--as with recent Beyonce, Alesha Dixon and Pussycat Dolls releases--the album bloats to twice that length.

Listen to the B-52s first studio album in 16 years and within ten seconds it's like the 21st century never happened. They sound just the same. [...] And it's a delight.

Despite this album's production credits reading like a PhD thesis, Korn's commercial masterplan is fatally undermined by certain glaring weaknesses, the main one being that their singer is a dunderheaded, sexist, self-pitying fool.

Their best album yet.

Marking not so much a revival as a triumphant rising from the ashes, “The Antidote” is a surprisingly potent and clear vision of musical intent.

By agreeing instead to compromise he's actually found both the quality and integrity he so desires and an album of songs which by anyone's definition sounds like a return to form.

True, there isn't necessarily the one big hitter that will guarantee the Scientists' vault back into the big time limelight. But Barbara is packed full of enough immediate favourites to claw back their fan base from the off.

While eight years ago Primal Scream embraced a hard edge that blew our faces off, this limp electro-pop doesn't stand up against the likes of The Knife, who infuse their work with both an inventiveness and emotion that's sorely lacking here.

Here, the band do what anyone suffering from a knock to their confidence does - they revert to the safety of what they know best.

Sound-wise, 'Sleeping With Ghosts' is pretty much flawless.

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.

Tapping in to our fearful collective unconscious, Liars have conjured a darkly mesmeric, thrillingly full-blooded, paranoid drama of ritual and occultism built from twitchy electronica, shrieking vintage synths, punk noise and unsettlingly twisted hip hop.

As musically competent and beautifully-produced as this record undeniably is, strip the vocals and you'd be hard-pushed to identify it as being an Oasis album or enjoy it accordingly.

Perfect Symmetry is often an exhilarating and unexpected pop record from a band you'd have thought incapable of either, and there's something genuinely life-affirming about that.

On this, the third eponymous Weezer record (see, they are incomparable wise-asses) and sixth in total, there are contained some of their most pronounced moments.

The Spirit Of Apollo, a record boasting some of the most pioneering musical talent of the last three decades, does not sound "timeless" but nor does it seem an appropriate tonic, voices passing unheralded in a confusion of mediocre, glossy production, guests from the stratosphere reduced to faces in the crowd.

The Circus possesses well crafted pop songs, with faultless production. There are certainly moments when Barlow comes into his own as a songwriter.

Busta seems to be treading water too often.

In short, it's the album everyone's been waiting for her to make.

You’d believe this was a “Weird Al” Jankovic record had you tuned in halfway through.

An album considerably richer than "Hot Fuss" and far more worthy of mainstream hugeness.

It would be thrilling to hear a Silversun Pickups record which finally shakes off all their influences and creates something entirely their own. Swoon isn't quite that record, but it takes them closer to that goal, and is a seductive, intricate thing of beauty in itself.

A proper, fully formed record rather than a side-project doodle, Colonia is where artistic integrity meets pop conviction in a curious, deranged yet compelling sing-along.

There's a good album in here crying to be let out.

We should laud Young for taking such risks at this stage of his career but 'Greendale' sounds like the sort of small town you spend your whole life running from. Or the place you go to retire.

Bon Jovi are at their best when delivering the country-tinged ballads.

We Started Nothing sounds exuberant and chiefly concerned with pleasing itself. Which--as is always the way--only makes it more pleasing to others.

Buy into the notion that The Teenagers are in fact a satirical comment on the "Shockwaves Generation", and this is a dry, impeccably observed album, closer in spirit to Arab Strap than any of the nu-rave favourites.

Charmingly forgettable.

It's genuinely sad to note that "Everything's The Rush" sounds a little too much like hard work.

If not a beginning to end classic album, it's full of potential classic tracks.

A drab and depressingly familiar proposition.

An entirely satisfying sophomore effort.

While great songs is something “Waiting For The Sirens’ Call” obviously lacks, it’s still a cracking New Order album - albeit one performed by a group all pushing 50 and mostly written about Bernard Sumner’s yacht.

They now have more in common with Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers than they do their former mentors Papa Roach.

It's blatant commercial product, something for everyone.

'Golden State' is easily the band's most accomplished record and should stand as one of the best British rock albums of 2001.

The Time Of Our Lives is a great pop EP drowning in a sea of bilge.

It's a mixed bag certainly and while nothing else here scales the heights of the single that's made his name thus far, there are plenty of moments of pop confection steered with a degree of sophistication to suggest he's more than a one trick pony.

There are a batch of mighty tunes here, and a sound that, while hardly de rigour, melds some of rock's freshest, brightest lights to their own street-wise, archetypal city swagger and 'Mockney' wit.

Crucially, if you stick with a formula, the least you can do is improve it. Unfortunately "Chuck" doesn’t and there’s nothing that’s even remotely equal to "Fat Lip" or "All Messed Up".

It's hard to imagine how Hands All Over could have been any more underwhelming. In truth the only exceptional thing about it is just how average it is.

The full band approach seems to weigh things down so heavily you can almost see the red welts on the shoulders of its two leaders.

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

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

Ultimately fails to capture or update the magickal mysticism of the music it seeks to draw from.

He is unrepentantly romantic throughout the album, though never quite twee or overbearing, which is quite a balancing act.

His tenuous grasp on reality and good taste slips and he plummets into a tawdry, gratuitous and self-congratulatory flurry of misogyny, expletives and reggae.

Therein lies the danger of building an iconic persona on your current obsessions and an unerring belief in everyone else's interest in your thoughts. When it hits gold, it's magnetic; when judgement lapses, the convictions seem tired.

Put simply, this is B-Movie rock: from the death rattle vocals, to the clichéd riffs and hackneyed subject matter.

Mostly, Donkey is undone by a dearth of really memorable, infectious tunes.

[A] slick, silly and thoroughly entertaining album.

There is an exploration outside of archetypal Girls Aloud territory on their latest offering but it barely steers too far from their recipe for success.

At its best “The Silent Hours” is a robust, reasonably straight ahead rock record and at its worst, a lumpen, forgettable distraction.