If the hardcore fanbase feel a blanch coming on, this isn't all wilful eclecticism gone mad. King's work is The Fall's unifying factor that keeps it cohesive.

Corgan is slowly swamped by the style he's adopted.

Much of It's Not Me's bummed-out vibes seem rooted in sound artistic sense, but musically a sunken-eyed pallor has replaced the rosy-cheeked flush and, you know what, it all gets a bit...draggy.

Jennifer Hudson would do well in stepping outside her comfort zone.

We're all for experimentation, but please: Nashville?

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.

For now, it's way more than a stop-gap but sadly not the second coming you might have been hoping for.

It's all good sauce, one supposes, but as Mills wheels out of earshot, tongue and balls dangling in the warm night air, it's hard not to wonder where the thoughtful, sullen kid whose eyes cut like lasers through sink estate bull**it has got to these days.

Where once the bark was of Beck, we have - and this hurts - Wings.

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.

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

Your record collection still only really needs a couple of Chk Chk Chk 12"s and that Out Hud album, but don't pass on the chance to see them live.

Like on James Blake's album, every swoon is accentuated with the help of a computer and at times just sounds like someone crying and using Auto-Tune at the same time.

Only lunatics would rank 'Heathen' alongside Bowie's '70s masterpieces. But for a 55-year-old who's spent such a surreally long time floundering, desperately searching for a) the zeitgeist and b) a tune, it's actually rather respectable.

Not a bad record by a long stretch but a disappointment nonetheless.

Who You Are doesn't entirely deliver, but even when its songs fall short of the promised hype, their potential is obvious.

Ultimately there's something very 80s about Pink. Something very kitsch and plastic; something very 'Breakfast Club'.

It's well-built, yes, but almost too well built, many parts sounding like they've been lifted directly from SY's vast back catalogue and slotted into place, like a jigsaw that needed completing, rather than the sprawling documents of noise and confusion this band's name is built upon.

Mainstream, bleeding-heart balladry, tempered by slightly outre arrangements.

Often thought of as ahead of his time perhaps Byrne is now in the perfect position to articulate the angst of socially unskilled western white men who find themselves taking over the world via new technology. The album's glut of different rhythms speaks of a man trying to find his groove.

Feeder are in danger of being a schizophrenic band, unrecognisable from their once “trademark” sound and prone to style swings on a whim.

It's too much risk-free computation and not enough wild emotion.

There’s conceivably a great record still lurking inside this band but you’re going to have to wait just a bit longer to hear it.

He still fires the occasional lyrical blank and his guitar playing has less of the sparks of the past, instead settling into a role complementing the songs rather than dominating them.

There are some truly great moments on "Senor Smoke".

There's little doubting Wale's potential but 'Attention Deficit' is so much like a lot of other rap fare out there that it will very likely suffer to be heard above the cynicism directed at hip hop in 2010.

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 certainly very cleverly composed and constructed but ultimately sounds aloof and impenetrable and, as a result, somewhat devoid of emotion.