There’s certainly a market for anodyne, unthreatening, middle of the road pop, and Blunt appeals to that market very successfully. Yet those who look for music to move them, be it through the feet, heart or brain, probably won’t be surprised to find that there won’t be too much to appeal to them here.

They haven't completely taken their eye off what made the Charlatans so successful in the first place, but the new sound is none too convincing.

They sound nice, look nice but you'd be pressed to find any substance.

In the final analysis, The Whip need to focus more on the dynamics of the dance floor and less on looking cool for the covers of inkies.

Compared to what went before, The Return Of... is a massive let down.

Kurt Vile: 50% Velvet Underground; 50% The Jesus And Mary Chain. Childish Prodigy: 50% Velvet Underground & Nico; 50% Darklands.

There's too much that should have never seen the light of day, that is little more than a band riffing on ideas in the studio without ever taking them anywhere near consummation. But Down In Albion just about remains afloat because there are moments on it when Babyshambles make us care.

All The Plans is full of driving piano, anthemic guitar, and a bit of swagger. They owe a huge debt to Coldplay, Ocean Colour Scene, and Oasis which, in itself, must be quite galling.

She is far, far too good to be fronting songs which sound ‘current’ only in the sense that you can imagine them ending up on Rihanna‘s rejection pile.

Ripe is a disappointingly bland affair. None of the songs have any edge to them, the tunes are predictable and the lyrics are mundane.

What the two have come up with next is a new member and a sort of hillbilly Pixies for children, or perhaps a grunge starter kit for Polyphonic Spree fans.

Certainly there are some interesting moments on Music From The Spheres. But overall it’s the sound of Coldplay treading water. More alarmingly, it begins to sound like they’re trying not to drown.

Unfortunately Turn It Up, bar two brilliant singles, just doesn't stand up to repeat listens.

For those expecting the worst ahead of Bloc Party’s return, Hymns is likely to validate all their fears. Change may have been unavoidable after losing two influential members, but to change beyond recognition is almost an insult to the original band’s legacy.

While this isn't a bad album--and Manson diehards are likely to enjoy it quite a bit--there's the sense that it may be an unwanted one.

This album is only worthy of more than one star for provoking a reaction. That, at least, is better than being merely another dull shade of musical grey. But only marginally.

The Open Door is an exercise in how not to make a sophomore album (or any album for that matter).

If The Black Eyed Peas want to sing, dance and rap about having good nights and getting laid, that's fine; but expecting a discerning audience to buy this bottle-rocket crap as an album is pure delusion. If they're truly trying to achieve more, The Beginning is a pretty awful start.

They're not completely terrible. Their music won't damage your ears or insult you, it's just quite spectacularly dull.

There's little in the way of fire or grit here.

It's not all bad, but there's no getting away from the fact the main problem with this lifeless debut is Elkington's voice.

Fixin' The Charts comes with a lofty goal: to grind down the blemishes that mar the rock face of the popular music mythos. But to attempt to "fix" history, to paint over its wrongs with a broad, sneerish stroke, is a gross mis-step in the career of one of anti-pop's savviest purveyors.

Papa Roach have the tools to be a damn good rock band, but they'll never be one unless they change the bloody record.

It is impeccably produced and sheened, but it sounds polished to the extent of being soulless.

With half of rEVOLVEr emulating his older tracks and the other half making strained attempts to branch out into rap and dance, it appears that the rappa ternt sanga simply hasn't found anywhere else to turn.

Despite it taking four years to come out, pretty much all of the songs on Always Tomorrow are forgettable, and made up of riffs so basic and hooks so anonymous that you’ll probably end up wishing they’d have waited a little longer.

Replete with tacky production and recycled ideas, its few merits are stretched to near breaking point.

Pay The Devil is for Van Morrison completists only.

Drowners is a fun little record, if you want to get all patronizing about it, but it’s difficult to get any further than that because of its staggering unoriginality.

Mature Themes is simple self-indulgence and that's rarely worth listening to.

To Lose My Life is an album made to a predefined plan with skill and no heart.

The lameness of the words would be forgivable if they were paired with music that provided any kind of pleasant distraction. But across Happy People’s 10 tracks, the band prove themselves incapable of writing a single decent hook.

Switzerland lacks any track with even a tenth of the standout potential of Danger! High Voltage. And it's a critical absence for Switzerland, because there's nothing on this record that makes you want to hear it a second time.

Unfortunately, all this really means is an extra emphasis on weirdly pitched keyboard riffs and slightly dated sounding beats.

The whole thing simply flat lines into mediocrity.

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about dance, and the experts out there might be thinking this album features the 'tune' of the summer, but for a former Simian fan, this is nothing but a huge disappointment.

The bits which 'aren't bad' are the bits which don't involve Ms Hilton.

You'll find more wit and invention on a solitary track by Ethan Kath and Alice Glass than you will on this depressingly retro and lumpen homage to a scene that wasn't even all that back in the day.

Clarke is a genuinely talented songwriter, if rather earnest in his intentions, but in Music for The People he and his mates seem to have lost the plot.

It truly is awful.

Hi-Tek's construction of techno beats and rave stabs on the quirky I Fink U Freeky and heavy brostep on opener Never Le Nkemise just add to the nauseating concoction of trash that comprises Ten$ion.

After a while, it grates badly on the nerves.

Green Day have become the very thing they once despised: buck-chasin’ mild boys of mayonnaise corporate rock.

Unless a couple more of these tracks manage to repeat the success of 'When I Grow Up' and stick on commercial radio, this is an album heading straight for the bargain bins.

When you're at Rihanna's level you can afford the best songwriters and producers in the business and sonically the album is generally far ahead of her peers. Yet if Sia's Diamonds is a sultry triumph, its character and uniqueness highlights the ultimately hollow pleasures of much around it.

So there are a couple of silly tracks - but then there were two silly Bennett sisters [in Austen's Pride and Prejudice]. Sadly, the remainder of the album is all Mary and no Elizabeth; devoid of life, wit, or energy.

For the most part, however, The Female Boss is a cynical and dire product which invites the riposte: Tulisa, you're fired.

Rather than offering reinterpretation, Malin sounds like an annoying guest at a house party, who despite all efforts to hide the guitar has found it and insists on playing a disparate bunch of songs much to the annoyance of everyone else, none of whom quite have the heart to tell him to stop.

Most of the album's remaining tracks are utterly vacuous interpretations of songs that few are likely to care much about. They offer nothing new to anyone or anything.

It's downright bad.

All in, it suffers from a lack of focus and direction.

Verve tracks such as Northern Soul and This Time were surprisingly successful attempts at funk. But the similar fusions attempted on United Nations Of Sound are so poorly executed that the album has to go down as a pompous, self-indulgent rock folly.

Petits Fours just has too many annoying bits about it to be good.