Flamboyance and melancholy in equal measure, then, but 'White Noise' mainly leaves you cold.

Not a bad album, but a divisive one for sure.

It just feels like, once again, Coldplay have done the selfless thing and gone out to protect EMI's share price, and at the end of it remain peering off the edge of a cliff edge, wishing they had the courage to jump.

Ultimately, too many of these tunes are rehearsal room grooves in search of a hook.

With two songs playing out at over nine minutes long, one feels that a decent edit would change things from somnambulant to plain dreamy.

London quartet Good Shoes offer little to get flustered over with this sometimes dire, but mostly mediocre second album.

It's solid enough, but given the imagination they once possessed, it sounds like UNKLE are trying too hard.

The Calexico-ish 'The Lady Is Risen' shows he can get close to a folky barnstormer, but on closer inspection the barn appears to be a set prop that might blow down in a stiff wind.

The beats here are as staggering as ever, but of an indulgent 19 tracks, none sound like they were good enough to give to anybody else.

But as a big comeback for these Welsh titans, it's more lost than prophecy...

Sadly, such pop bluster is largely missing from this debut album, which is over-long and obsessed with pained R&B choruses--precisely the reasons we all went off American rap in the first place.

It quickly loses its appeal and gives way to the feeling that this is a just reasonable thrash metal record.

Sadly, a lack of focus in melody and structure means it's not quite as atmospheric as Mick seems to think.

Kelly shows how easy it is to keep it simple, melodious and un-synthesised; and on these occasions, Kelly's lyrics come to the fore.... when he shelves his obsession with opening your legs and opens his mind, that he is capable of making thought-provoking material.

A rather mousey, introspective record, awash with the wishy-washy sounds of shoegazing, and yet not without its precise, audacious moments.

It's best treated as a curio in the Smashing Pumpkins' legacy; and for those who grew up on 'Today', '1979' and 'Ava Adore', you're better left with your memories.

This collaboration-heavy eighth album tends to fail when it experiments.

It's a great shame that this album's component parts don't raise the whole above 'nice to know they're still around' status.

Does a new generation of music lovers really need a third solo album from [Malkmus] which includes songs that house guitar wig-outs and last up to eight minutes? Not really. [28 May 2005, p.64]

The Uglysuit, whose country-prog-post-rock-indie-orchestral ramblings recall, variously, Wilco, Bright Eyes, The Shins, Elbow, Ryan Adams, My Morning Jacket and the soundtrack for every emotionally self-indulgent US drama ever made. Yet, hearing the warm country musings of ‘Chicago’ or the aching two-note piano motif of 'And We Became Sunshine’, it’s hard not to settle into the seduction.

Perhaps it was the pressure of following breakthrough hit ‘C’mon C’mon’, or some serious Jack White payback voodoo, but now, where should have roared a gutsy, triumphant comeback squeaks a patchy, mediocre-in-places record.

On their third album, the trio largely abandon the Latin influences of earlier outings for a medium-haul flight back to the more two-dimensional sounds of Canadian indie-rock.

What's missing is any emotional contrast to stop all that cleverness from sounding overwhelming.

[Their] penchant for pastiche has evolved... into full-blown plagiarism. [9 Oct 2004, p.57]

The LP toes a line between eclecticism and kitchen sink, but the one thing he hasn't chucked in here is a little focus.

Her voice--treated and autotuned to within an inch of its life throughout--still sounds like that of the Mouseketeer who brought us '...Baby One More Time’, with every breathy “Mmmm… yeah!” and all the oh-so-naughty lyrics, such as the ones above, sounding forced and unconvincing. Of course, on a large number of the tracks here she has the solidly cool-sounding (no doubt expensive) backdrop of futur’n’b pop.

Konk is the sound of a band in disarray, unsuccessfully attempting to hold things together.

It is a one-trick album and they spunk away their best song, the incantatory ‘Shame On The Soul’, right at the start, but the aforementioned trick is, at least, an affecting, and very occasionally gorgeous, one.

It remains a 1980s Johnny Cash album and it wasn’t until Rick Rubin got hold of him 10 years later that he came in from the cold.

While there are blips in all areas of life - the possible existence of Bigfoot, the rich and strange wildlife of Madagascar - few things cast more suspicion upon the whole survival-of-fittest concept than the continuing career of Everclear.

With a bit of luck, Broken Records won’t be afraid to indulge themselves a little more in the future, because it would be a minor tragedy to see such a worldly band opt to wallow in mediocrity

The problem is simply the songs: route-one, four-chord grunge adrenaline hits that have none of the haunting and eerie dissonance that set them apart from bands like Wavves, and the rest of US indie’s surplus of breezy slacker-rockers last time around.

Bragg and The Blokes' delivery sounds just as dated as the social traditions they lampoon.

Ultimately, Rebel Heart feels like a wasted opportunity.

The very fact long-time collaborator Rick Rubin is at the helm is proof enough that while the production is mostly immaculate, I'm With You is an exercise in how a multi-million selling rock behemoth plays it safe.

Psychedelic craziness. [30 Apr 2005, p.64]

He barely has to try and, to be honest, here it shows.

The frame is there, there's just not enough meat on the muscles of their Euro-jitter-pop.

The actual music on this album is excellent--the sort of Canadian indie beloved of people who live in cities yet dress like the Unabomber....A hole is kicked in the side of it by Carey Mercer’s berserk singing however.

Excuse me sir, is this 1993? [26 Aug 2006, p.43]

Truly this is music for life's uncomplicated moments. [15 Jul 2006, p.39]

Nearly everything Robbie Williams writes is some kind of confessional and here it doesn't quite come off. There just isn't the sufficient depth of him in it to make it work.

For the most part it's clear that the New Zealanders have lost what sense of direction or purpose they had left. [7 Oct 2006, p.39]

Full of sombre, skeletal and obliquely confessional songs, it's a crafted collection with ruminations on sex and loss. [5 Feb 2005, p.50]

Their attempts to assimilate their record collections often fall between two stools--unlikely to do the business on a dancefloor or spirit you away at home through the power of its sequencing.

The result is not just unimaginative and lyrically anodyne--it’s boring.

There are four or five genuinely decent songs on here - but ultimately, as a whole it just feels a little too worthy, a little too overwrought, and a little too formulaic to be worth the 64 minutes and 32 seconds of your life.

Good moments include the drama-packed ‘Just Another Night’ and the fun pop of ‘On A Roll’, but neither resembles the formulaic trash cluttering the rest of the record.

Only the LP’s soaring ‘Intro’ hints at greatness, and despite the raw talent on display, the dose is diluted and the sum total falls short.

It’s not awful, just bland, and lacks the bite that electro-pop records need to be lifted out of the purgatory that is mediocrity.

Within And Without hangs oppressively, saved only by fleeting moments of clarity like the title track's stabbing outro, or the jump-rope glitter that opens 'Before'.

Ho-hum. [22 Jul 2006, p.39]

The album itself reveals she’s also got a penchant for exhuming the sickly-sweet memory of Minnie Riperton’s ‘Loving You’ and setting it to 17 different slow jamz drenched in studio gloss.

'Dumb Luck' will numb the pain for an hour, but you'll be buggered if you can remember anything about it afterwards.

Not quite Animal Collective or Stereolab, but at times sounding like an Ibiza chill-out album, there are hot flushes of brilliance here but they are few and far between.

Destined for the 'obscure, kinda interesting' slot come end-of-year list time.

They do their best to distance themselves from Actual Sabbath, but too often it’s by slouching through their Satanic netherworld, Dio’s cabaret bludgeoned down by lurching riffs and over-egged orchestration.

Asiatisch, however, is even more pretentious [than two previous EPs], pairing instrumental UK grime with Asian flourishes to explore the relationship between the west and China.

Sound[s] pretty much the same as they did a decade ago. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]

Unless you're a fan, the title says it all.

While their love of premeditated spontaneity might be admirable in jazzier quarters, in reality it means that almost every song on their debut is marred by sudden changes in time signature, key and genre.

'Quixotic' is doomed to be a record that has dinner parties nodding in mute agreement at its quality. Albeit half a decade ago.

It's frustrating to see them pissing around like South Park's Matt and Trey, when they can produce something as genuinely affecting and pure pop as 'Stay Forever'.

Despite the presence of ex-Razorlight man Andy Burrows on drums and extra songwriting oomph, their latest offering feels like another exercise in anonymity.

Yet it’s also a record that’s in denial of things like the atomic bomb, IBM, the internet and the fucking millennium. And that really is the true spirit of nihilism, no matter how well you dress it up in your parents’ rags.

Musically, Madness still trade in pub singalongs powered by ska rhythms and music-hall jollity--but the jollity feels forced, and Suggs’ tired vocals suggest a man going through the motions.

Admirable, if not necessarily lovable.

It all just cries out for a little more oomph.

Ultimately, the pop sheen Adams applies on The Voyager is at odds with Lewis' songs. By always opting for directness, he's failed to let her do justice, musically, to the darkness of her inspiration.

It's guiltily satisfying in a bearded, nodding sort of way, but there's little to grab on to in such an ironic hall of mirrors.

After 64 minutes of the same, it all starts to feel like a bit of a grind.

Where the first four records (and particularly the Matador releases) sounded like a band fighting for their lives – or at least pretty keen to make you listen – this is the sound of a band struggling to muster the energy to go on.

At least 40 per cent of 'The Spine' is really rather charming. [3 Jul 2004, p.65]

At their best the Young Knives can write as good a pop song as anyone in the country, but this is a disappointing second effort ironically weighed down by the English eccentricities that once helped them stand out from the pack.

Does nothing wrong but could do with a bit of meat. [13 Aug 2005, p.58]

It shows range, sure, but it feels so disparate that it's just baffling. Worse, none of these poses and personae actually feel convincing.

Unlike Cash, the ego on display here still sounds like it's got the whip hand on the talent and you never really start to like him. [4 Mar 2006, p.31]

Not, by any means, a disaster. More a cruel glimpse of a talent that occasionally blazes but is frustratingly inconsistent.

While they’ve never been terribly fashionable, they’ve always used that to their advantage, projecting a underdog siege mentality whilst simultaneously selling out arenas. Concrete Love, however, is nothing to beat their own drum about.

In the end, whether it's a cynical bid for the mainstream or an experiment gone wrong, Riot barely registers as a minor disturbance.

Here are 13 songs of dire cod-reggae, OK stoner rock and quite-good-'80s AOR, which makes them the thinking man's Tenacious D, for what that's worth.

Round the back nine (‘Golden Fire’, ‘Kilmore’s End’, ‘Overnight’), the attention to detail slips, and they end up with a load of meat patties of twee that just come across as Owl City in fashionable shoes, a whiny inner-child deserving of a smacked botty-bot.

So swathed in electronic trickery, space-age swoops and super-produced vocals is My Electric Family, though, that it ends up a little soulless; individually the tracks have a removed piquancy, but an hour’s solid exposure leaves you yearning for a crackle, some fuzz, or any human intervention.

Not sure-footed enough in its subversion, its artificiality feels fake rather than carefully plotted.

Rivas’ voice isn’t enormously distinctive, either, meaning Sky Swimming rarely eclipses the dreaded adjective ''pleasant''.

Ultimately, it’s sketchy and uneven, ridiculous in as many of the wrong ways as the right, but not quite the disaster its tracklisting would suggest.

Adele is not yet ready to produce an album of sufficient depth to match her voice.

Throw in the tinny synth on 'Fish In The Sky' and this album couldn't get any more late-'70s if it tried. If it was a TV programme, it'd be Starsky & Hutch--a dubious honour to say the least.

Almost every sound here is precision-tooled for maximum obnoxious effect.

Korn's eighth is actually an interesting listen; as diverse as the witless art of nu-metal gets. That doesn't mean it's good. It merely leaves us with a numbing dilemma: we want to hate it, but we can't.

Dios (Malos) are clearly capable of breezily mordant psychedelia nd thumpingly pie-eyed pop... Sadly, they're not so hot on tunes you can't help whistling. [4 Mar 2006, p.31]

Its bluster and sheen ends up burying the barbed poetry of frontman Mike Duce.

These country-blues laments are seriously sleepy-eyed. [10 Sep 2005, p.66]

The former Sylvia Young alumnis’ latest solo offering is a mixed bag of soulfully gritty D’Angelo-influenced vocals and Busta Rhymes-esque rants.

His considerable production chops can't disguise that his songwriting too often feels half-formed.

It’s hard to knock stompers like ‘Roaring Waters’ either, but the vanilla title track and the plodding ‘Hammer & Tongs’, come off as cheesy, even for this lot.

The reality is Free Energy sound like ’90s rock berks Terrorvision. It’s not all woe--‘Bad Stuff’ is like an FM rock Pavement--but it makes us worry that Murphy might be losing his edge.

A mildly diverting collection of the good (DJ Cam, Model 500), bad (Beth Orton, Mary Margaret O'Hara) and pleasantly forgettable (Dubtribe Sound System, Ananda Project).