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

But for all its feel-good factor and predominantly strong songwriting, 'Sha Sha' does have its forgettable filler tracks and near-misses and generally needs a stronger, more individual voice to help it stand out from an already heaving crowd of young American singer/songwriters.

So there it is, bizarre, world-weary, beautiful, touching, self-indulgent but never, never dull ? at least not until at least nine minutes into 'Like A Possum'.

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.

There's very little on 'Lenny' that isn't a re-hash of former hits.

It is hard to tell where No Doubt starts and the producers end.

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

Gone are the likes of 'Queer' or 'Subhuman', there's no ummph or intelligence. In straining to achieve a smarter, more mature album the band have created the most tawdry epitaph possible.

But all too often there's the feeling that, in trying so hard to match the melodrama Ronson and Pallet have draped around him, Waller loses sight of the smaller picture and sounds confused, out of place.

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

Much of 'Amazing Grace' is the tired evidence of a man rehashing the same ideas - rather than sounds and movements - like a robotic, assembly line Andy Warhol.

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.

Living up to expectations is tough, especially ones as high as those that have been hovering over Minaj throughout 2010. But it's hard to see who actually wanted to hear a record like this, stripped of curiosities and bombast, that leaves the biggest talent in hip hop with more to prove than ever.

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.

Worst of all, it turns out that commercially-minded dubstep is--perhaps inevitably--a much weaker prospect than its club counterpart.

Stripped of novelty and goodwill, The Darkness are just a resolutely ordinary band after all.

What pulls this album back from being anything but revelatory, however, is not only the typical lazy rock the band are purveyors of, especially 'Fire' and 'Fast Fuse,' but also the diabolical lyrical content that's employed throughout West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

In a nutshell this is The Beatles most average album with some of the fluff removed.

Norah's most personal collection of songs to date.

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.

All told, it's a rag-tag collection, and one that comes short of the band's high standards even allowing for the commercial backlash.

Eliza Doolittle is an album of potential but, for the moment, that's all it is.

There's so little substance here, it's difficult to engage with the record or its creator.

"Jacket Full Of Danger" thinks it's funny but isn't - it's often pathetic.

For the most part, "The Understanding" saunters along without a trace of urgency, which is unfortunate as Royksopp were always at their best when electronic ingenuity rather than pastel-shaded synth washes were holding things up.

Evil Urges isn't a bad album by any stretch of the imagination but it still manages to fall well short of expectations when applying the benchmark set by this fine band.

Neither wholly satisfying nor wholly great.

We Are The Night feels bloated and ornate amongst the elegant functionalism of post-millennial club music.