Just as you're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, you realise that there's another five-track EP by these self-absorbed, boring, aesthetically bankrupt bellends still to go. Double bummer.

Madonna and Perez Hilton may be fans, then, but if you’ve got even a passing interest in actually enjoying a record, don’t buy this one.

It seems Shaddix still writes most of his songs in purple ink in diaries with little locks on. [28 Aug 2004, p.56]

Overall, it misses Hot Chip’s outsider appeal completely, coming off as whingey and middle aged. Don’t bother.

This latest effort sees her turn indistinguishable. [1 Apr 2006, p.43]

This time the Mickie Most-omatic (phasers set to Winehouse) has dredged up someone so inauthentic she makes Duffy look like Johnny Cash.

Though there’s a lot to dislike, there’s also the bones of something interesting here. If only they’d stuck with making more numbers like the enticing Adam Green-ish gypsy pop of ‘Neal’, they might just have won us over.

It can indeed be shunted into the drawer marked "I can't believe I used to like this band." [17 Jun 2006, p.39]

This stinks of trying too hard.

How anyone outside the walls of a mental asylum could genuinely enjoy the annoyingly repetitive industrial drum-throbs, aimless experimento-guitar crunches and lyrics about "reeking gonads" that characterise songs called things like 'Epizootics!' is beyond me.

Unless you’re hyped up on a cocktail of Sunny D and Haribo yourself, you’ll find most of this album very annoying indeed.

All that seems to have been lost over the years of caning from the likes of ‘We Are Electric’ and ‘Danse En France’ are the tunes.

The effect this record has, with its remedial drumming, crappy store-bought synth presets and faux-sensitive, third-form lyrics, is as pleasant as unnecessary eye surgery.

Kittie are rubbish, with a permanent lyrical setting of "Feel A Bit Miserable, Parents Don't Understand Me" and no original ideas whatsoever. [21 Aug 2004, p.49]

Avoid this tosh at all costs.

Semisonic are the lambswool jumper pulled over the eyes of people who have an irresistible soft spot for 'classic' songwriting. Fail to give their songs full attention - and God knows, that's easy enough - you could almost believe this is literate radio-friendly pop; just the thing for those blustery rides through an imaginary Santa Monica freeway.

For a genre that once sounded astonishingly futuristic, it is quite remarkable how tired and old house sounds now.

Too often their over-earnest delivery is unbearable.

The message is simple: the joke isn’t funny any more, last orders rang long ago and the game is well and truly up.

Shocker! The long-awaited (it says here) follow-up to a sublimely average debut is another half-arsed muppet show executed with the charisma of a terminally ill sloth.

Wayne's 10th studio album sees memory of his charisma and sparkle during that mid '00s era fade further.

Mostly, what their reliance on groove rather than tune adds up to is dirge.

Four albums later and it's more of the same, minus the big hooks.

More over-produced introspection. [6 Aug 2005, p.56]

It's certainly a messy record, made by half of a broken legend.

Richard Paul Ashcroft has assembled that most ruggedly authentic of musical backings, a team of LA session players, and walked them through all of his most anodyne default settings, at a deadeningly flat pace.

An exercise in taking a joke way too far.

It tries to capture the essence of 1973 without having any big hairy old prog hits on it. Which is a bit like trying to capture the essence of the Star Wars films by cutting out all the bits in space.