As with Hive Mind, the record's most interesting moments are its briefest, almost as if Martin-McCormick's strongest ideas are the implied ones, the unrealised ones.

Overall, Homosapien doesn’t possess quite the same spirit as Church With No Magic but is certainly a surefooted step somewhere.

Flop moments aside though, Rebellious Soul ticks the prerequisite boxes of classic r’n'b: confessional tales of love, loss and longing sung with passion and sincerity.

It’s a shame that their debut album is so short on variety and surprises, and doesn’t capture the imagination past a couple of listens.

Alicia Keys is a singer-songwriter in the purest sense, and Girl On Fire is at its best when Keys (and her collaborators) remember that.

It may well appeal to those content with downtime after more forthright records. As an album, however, Evelyn’s good mood sits somewhere between decisive and whimsical.

The record is at its weakest when it’s more hoedown than hoes down.... Generally though, Cyrus’s fourth album is more--ahem--bangers than clangers.

Generally the album hits all the right notes, with great vocals and solid sounds, but at times you may be overpowered by the sickly-sweet nature of the beast.

Her delivery--nasal, slightly nagging--inevitably begins to grate long before the album's running time is up. But there are points of interest that take Kreayshawn beyond empty attempts at swag.

Bundick never quite detaches from the sound here, and if he languishes there any longer he’s liable to go down with the ship.

When Teengirl are on form, their music is a heady thing: house music sent delirious on a glut of ideas, or pop working to some half-known criteria. It's an unstable edifice, though, and too often the results fall flat.

Silver may believe in the changeless beauty of his art, but he doesn’t quite succeed in convincing the rest of us.

There’s no pandering to musical tastes, no whimsical experimentation, but instead real unity between a song’s musicality and meaning.

Having been born of time around Hot Chip's main activities, however, New Build's debut is not without the limitations that are likely of such an endeavour.

The album’s periods of gestation and decomposition so outweigh its moment of flowering that a full listen is much more a chore than a pleasure.

Nobody's denying Herndon's ambition and technical chops, but the goals of this album--however successfully they might be achieved--are often unappealing; the sonic outcomes, regrettably, a little dull.

Aside from anything, the album’s glut of southern coke-rap cuts are plain mundane; partly because trap is so horribly over-exposed right now, and partly because footwork sounds unordinary next to any genre you could name.

By taking electronic to mean, largely, removed introspection, WIXIX might be the one example of a guitar band who, by fully embracing electronica, have regressed.

Overall this is a fine, and occasionally transcendent, stepping up of Fiona's game.

Body Music lacks both the pace and range required to sustain repeated listens, and rests too heavily on one--and even two-year old singles to bolster its overall quality.

Weird Drift is a little laid back, lacking the vertiginous drama that you find in the best synth-pop, and I’m more inclined to stick with another recent Planet Mu foray into the form, Miracle’s overlooked Mercury.

There’s very little sense of a uniting personality, and you’re left wondering how genuinely great an album H&LA might make, how much more they would feel like a band rather than a conceptual project, if they cut loose as much as they do on ‘The Key’.

As a pop-object, Interiors is far more convincing than its predecessor; as a musical experience it is still, regrettably, thin.

Kwes is a resourceful, competent producer and songwriter who’s not short on ideas; if anything, he’s overwhelmed by his own creativity.

Even when Unapologetic fails, it often does so in interesting ways.

There's nothing here resembling stadium polish: if anything, the lush arrangements often yield subtly fascinating results.

It’s so clean, stylish and pleasant that few will rubbish it, so the spotlight is instead shone on select tracks whose impact is then over-stretched as they try to inject some gravitas into how fluffy it can be.

There is some meat here, but it’s difficult to suck it off the bone. Perhaps in his efforts to prevent his music being “reified,” Warwick has fallen short of saying anything much at all.