Sex Dreams And Denim Jeans is catchy, fresh-sounding and brilliantly self-referential, with an attitude a million miles removed from a major label star pretending to be like, totally, OMG, mental.

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.

While the album is far from musically innovative, to cite it as an entirely unrewarding and joyless listen would be hyper-critical and plain wrong.

Overall there's just too much bland corporate sludge rock here to make any geniune lasting impression.

There’s not enough quality across the whole of Evolve to convincingly make the case that Imagine Dragons actually have, or to attract an audience of new listeners. Evolve is a good idea, but in practise it turns out that it doesn’t really work.

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.

His attempts to be emotive or inspirational sound just wrong.

With Everybody Wants To Be On TV, they've given those masses what they want. But there's nothing for the discerning music fan.

Wired Together is a patchwork of half-finished schemes - loud enough to give you a headache, bland enough to stop you thinking - that pales next to its genre contemporaries and seems to aspire to little more than making a trendy noise.

Where it hits the mark, One Of The Boys is sparky and accomplished--though entirely disposable--pop.

As their sound comes into focus again, and their inflence is found to be more powerful than we first thought, there are mixed feelings on this latest Stereo MCs offering.

As real big-bucks contenders, Kodaline aren’t quite there yet. But as a debut, In A Perfect World manages to find its feet with ease.

Regardless of how good the voice is, if the music does not follow suit then there's only so far you can get.

This is, after all, the sound of Paul Smith freed of his band and label obligations - but the fact remains that Margins, while an interesting insight into a character, is a frustratingly hit-and-miss affair.

The music is happy and content, the sound of both success and the comfort of being established enough to make an album entirely for yourself.

The album has undoubtedly been an opus of dedication but essentially there is no spontaneity.

Merging the sounds of space rock with an element of trance and a smattering of early Velvet Underground experimentation, the group ends up with an enticing album that holds a fresh mix of sounds.

It’s nice enough. That’s the problem with Snake Oil, though: the highest bar the music reaches is being decent, and the loftiest ambition of these songs is to be simply tolerated, packed in amongst other unremarkable tunes on an Apple Music playlist called ‘Tuesday Vibes’ or something similar.

For an enjoyable 'kickaround' of an album this is a cheeky little blighter that will continue to tickle ears, raise a smile and brighten any listen for a while yet.

Sadly, expert guitar playing cannot carry an album. Moreover, it is too sterile and obsessively arranged, and the majority of the vocals lack that rock fierceness. Everyone is playing it too safe, with the production geared towards something mainstream and pop-oriented rather than experimentation and reinterpretation.

There’s talent here, although it’s often buried deep beneath generic beats and lyrical self-obsession that eventually becomes a bit exhausting to listen to.

When Blunt sticks to playing it safe, he offends the least. And whilst it seems contrived to applaud an artist for sticking to his zone, this man is an exceptional case.

Maximum Entropy is the somewhat frustrating work of a band with potential in need of some fine tuning.

Sure, nostalgia abounds (albeit with a bit more modern sheen), but The Bishops have, in a terrible way, outdone themselves in their songwriting, and have given new meaning to the term 'autopilot'.

Perhaps it's a problem with sequencing, as no doubt some of the acoustically driven material that The Vines compose is glorious, but it always sits difficultly alongside the heavier, angrier stuff that they are better at writing, and more at home playing. It's a problem that has manifested itself on every album, and is more than evident on Melodia.

The emphasis with Generation seems to be on cramming in as many styles as possible. This gets tediously close to "look I'm a DJ, watch what I can play," rendering listening the first few times a nauseating experience.

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.

This is a startling new direction, and while not entirely successful, it confirms Cornell as a vocalist of versatility and strength.

If plodding indie-by-numbers with the odd nice tune thrown in is your bag, jump right in. Those seeking a bit more invention may care to look elsewhere.

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

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.

(ONe) is decidedly safe and anything but experimental.

Fortune is the kind of record that will please Brown's many deluded female fans, but we cannot with good conscience give it a single star.

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

If you want to stretch your wings further, you need originality and you need not just bravado but actual courage--and Viva Brother's world is neither brave nor new.

Neontwang is a successful comeback from a band that have been written off more times than they would care to remember.

While this is a solid effort--and a more solid one than anything they’ve put together before--it’s not likely to set the world, or the charts, on fire.