James never really follows it through.

How you find Document And Eyewitness will depend on your appetite for artistic bloody mindedness. Still, if you’re a fan of Wire, you’ll know it can be moreish.

It’s an honest album, and while you may not skip back to all of it, its jagged pieces all have their place.

MGMT is by some margin the New Yorker’s most intuitive, sincere and naturalistic record. The bad news is that it’s not at all musically interesting.

Yet despite having created a record that admirably challenges pop conventions, Black Dice could let a little more of the tradition in to help shape their material further and get the most from this direction.

Indie Cindy plays just like one of Black’s solo efforts, but with better session players: good, yes, but never great.

In The Lonely Hour is an album made by an artist who spent years waiting to be famous, but when he got there, found that he didn’t actually have that much to say.

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

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.

This is two albums in a row now that were basically a bit boring, and she needs to sort it out soonish please.

A tedious album from an otherwise great talent.

Everything that is missing from [Lady Gaga's Artpop] is here, but everything that is good about it is spectacularly absent from Prism.

It's not a classic album, but its contents implicitly argue that the concept of a "classic album" has become irrelevant in 2012 anyway.

The album's middle section treads water--'The Palace' passes by without making any impression whatsoever, '1313′ sounds like a more conventional Panda Bear--and then it all goes tits up.

If you dislike fidgetty edits and squealing high frequencies fine--go and listen to Eleh--but if you like dance music crashing into the most mainstream of the mainstream on a skateboard, being cheeky, rude, funny and giving you a massive rush when you listen to it, then here it is. Recess. Enjoy.

Generally though, The Fifth‘s “dance” tracks--‘Bassline Junkie’, ‘Something Really Bad’, et al--just seem too limp to succeed as radio hits, and they’re certainly not good or interesting songs in any other capacity.

Play this album from start to finish and it’s hard not to feel that at the core of its cheaply gratifying genealogy is nothing but misery.