A so-so album which suggests it may be time for Ms Fenty to take a holiday.

Many people who have heard Flamingo have said it sounds a lot like a Killers album. Wrong. It is more that The Killers' albums sounded like Brandon Flowers solo albums, with a bit of indie guitar on top to snare those Reading & Leeds headline slots.

Only on 'Caretaker' and 'Not Wing Clippers' does their third eye briefly blink; for much of the rest of this debut, the outlook's grey.

Cher's not proved herself nimble enough to be more than roadkill beneath its wheels.

While the overall sound is brighter, it's also largely rather weedy, and trading in the once colossal stoner riffs for languid neo-folk doesn't really suit this five-piece all that well.

The lows are low for sure, but the highs are largely absent.

If you scratch below the surface of 'See You On The Other Side' you'll find little of substance. [3 Dec 2005, p.43]

Occasionally... she does hint at her past genius. [2 Sep 2006, p.21]

John & Jehn probably imagine themselves as Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie And Clyde, when in reality they’re more like the indie-goth Richard & Judy.

Songwriting low on insight, high on moaning.

Famous First Words sounds less like a manifesto, more like a misguided step-by-step guide.

Dithers between drone rock and harmonica-driven indie-strut. [14 Jan 2006, p.33]

That cat-in-a-swing-coat yowl will still be a divider for many, but it's a snag of human individuality in a smooth, if mixed pack.

The spontaneous nature of this album isn't quite the asset it could be. [26 Nov 2005, p.45]

Sure, it has its moments.... However, things come unstuck when Joker swings for romance.

Unfortunately though, Fields never quite reach such dizzy heights on the rest of the album, preferring instead to apply their considerable talents to creating numerous prog-outs that lack the heroic factor of their first single.

Heroux may yet have an album in him that doesn't basically sound like his favourite '80s music stapled together, but this ain't it.

'The Altogether' adds weight to the increasing suspicion that Orbital's best work is, like their hairlines, behind them.

There's certainly a good ear for a melody in evidence (most noticeable of all on Imperial), but testicles are nowhere to be seen.

OK, their lightweight bossa nova songs grate, but when they go all funereal, you get great lines such as “We move like knives through scars on land.”

Too often, Thumpers fall flat.

As a reminder of Eminem’s vocal showboating, ShadyXV is impressive. The problem--and it’s a persistent one--is that where once his anger was energetic, now it simply betrays lethargy.

Lyrically there are a few choice morsels (for example: “Cat fight, swollen lip/Hair caught in the teeth of your zip”), but taken as a whole it leaves a taste of saccharine.

Scratch dances merrily over the electronics, but the two parties rarely connect in a cohesive way.

Once the dust dies down, though, the remainder of Who We Touch feels disappointingly timid in comparison, and the particularly saggy middle section sees them pitch their tent smack bang in the middle of the road.

Doesn't life already seem cruelly short? Do you really want to waste any of it ploughing through a new Duran Duran record? [9 Oct 2004, p.56]

Such boyish noise has been done to death of late and, frankly, it’s been done better. More interesting is David Cox and Russell Crank’s Tiga-ish pop sensibility.

‘Stay Awhile’ and renditions of The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody’ and the Burt Bacharach and Hal David-penned ‘This Girl’s In Love With You’ are stunning in isolation. A whole album of Deschanel’s wholesome, entertaining-the-troops voice and M Ward’s tasteful instrumentation is cloying.

CSS may care deeply about every song (though it often doesn't sound like it), but for the listener, a lot of the charm has worn off.

The unfortunate irony is that Sounds From Nowheresville doesn't sound much like a grand rejection of pop music at all. It just sounds a little bereft of ideas, and way too short.

Overall Change lacks Wire’s usual focus.

On first listen sound[s] like someone taking the piss out of The Rapture. [11 Sep 2004, p.57]

They fare better on the more tuneful, less screechy 'Midnight Hours', but as a whole the album would have benefited from some ruthless editing and extra production spit and polish.

And for her second album of Amos-aping MTV-branded Lilith Fair fodder, the barmiest, prettiest pretender to Tori's throne of corporate crackpot chic deals unashamedly in that tired and trusted heavyweight heart-tugging currency: relationships.

From production so glossy that you could use it to reapply your lipstick to Sisqo's tortuous way with words, there's little here in the way of sex or sensuality.

There’s a fine line between blues authenticity and pub-rock tedium and, accordingly, Attack & Release often falls victim to parody.

The concept is pleasant at first, but pretty soon the repetitive nature of each soundscape--clipped beats, soft Catalan/Castellano vocals and the odd bash, pluck, bird-call and random tinkle--starts to make NME jittery.

This is easily the weakest DMX release to date.

Leaving behind the soul-infused, gutter-punk leanings of their debut, this desperately craves the attentions of the MOR indie mainstream in a way so steeped in bathos that the over-produced sheen of the car-ad soundtracking title track shines less like superstar diamonds and more like sun off a bald man’s head.

Nothing quite fits, giving the impression that this material wasn't good enough for the guest artists' own albums.

Pop princess turned electro muse fails to deliver.

'A Funk Odyessey' takes you on a journey of eye-closing triteness.

This is just one long squelchy fart of a soundscape that Reznor himself admits is probably too long. It's certainly too unremitting.

There are bits of 'Amputechture' that sail perilously away from good honest prog into the realms of free jazz. [9 Sep 2006, p.37]

Listen speckles similar crackers (‘Goodbye Friend’, ‘Hey Mama’) between gushes of sizzle sewage, as if all of Ibiza’s been trying to get high on glittery laxatives.

Album two features some catchy and classy electronic dance music.... Unfortunately though, ‘Broken Record’ sounds like a Eurovision-endorsed soundtrack to Cassack dancing and ‘Satellites’ is a limp version of Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light.’

A tasteful set of sorrow-wallowing wet-indie covers produced by James Ford.

The Day's trademark bubblegum punk rock guitars have all been turned down in favour of a less electric, more organic sound. Where once they rocked out, now they polka on the awful Levellers-like 'Fashion Victim' - a song about Gianni Versace. Please.... 'Warning' is the sound of a band losing its way.

While it's briefly thrilling to hear Young's bolshy take on Woody Guthrie's 'This Land Is Your Land', it's nowhere near Johnny Cash/Rick Rubin standards, or even a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

It's a little like a Crimewatch reconstruction: very well put together, all in a good cause, vaguely entertaining, but really they're just hoping it'll vaguely remind you of something that happened years ago. [1 Oct 2005, p.47]

A not-bad record. [11 Mar 2006, p.43]

The beats may be basic and the quality fuzzy... but there are diamonds among the dirt. [21 Aug 2004, p.49]

You leave American Gangster longing for more of this don't-give-a-fuck attitude, but the feeling that presides is Jay-Z patting his wallet.

Half-knowing, half-full of anthems and lyrically halfway to hell, Off With Their Heads is musically halfway there. Kaisers have barely missed a beat on the highway to massive-dom, but they’re hardly raising our heart rates.

As a self-conscious play for stadium-rock ascension, it may prove successful. As a successor to one of the most honest and affecting debuts of recent years, however, it feels a little empty.

Although 'I Run' and 'At Once' are the sort of soaring tunes they always did so well, on the whole there's no compelling answer to that initial question: why?

Sadly, it's an isolated gem ['Dejalo'] that can't lift Under The Blacklight out of its dull AOR mire.

His attempts to revolutionise, strip bare and stretch the borders of R&B with all manner of glitches, gollums and glaciers are admirable, but it’s only when he tranquilizes his inner Usher for the downbeat piano throb of ‘See You Fall’, the spectral orchestration of ‘Pour Cyril’ and the acoustic minimalism of ‘2 Years On (Shame Dream)’ that he achieves the subtlety and invention of, say, Sufjan Stevens.

The result is stronger than you might think, but too inconsistent and devoid of depth to stand out on a battlefield where Gaga rules all.

Terrific to get stoned to, the unfortunate upshot being that this is music that makes you fall asleep. [3 Sep 2005, p.74]

The nine tracks here turn to the old-school and the classic, making the carols you sung at school into something better suited to a night doing shots of eggnog in Fat Mike’s shed.

Here, ultimately, the DJ remains resolutely in the background. ANd that was never the point. [16 Sep 2006, p.35]

Perkins clearly has stories to tell of difficult journeys travelled, but unfortunately it comes across as yet another Yank putting out the roadside campfire with dribble from his harmonica.

Workmanlike. [18 Mar 2006, p.33]

There seems to be a hollowness, a lack of soul, an empty Big Mac carton where this album's heart should be.

In an attempt to purge themselves of the jaunty millstone that is "Young Folks" and all the joyous indie pop that went along with it, PB&J have ended up with a purely draining effort. Living Thing borders on the narcoleptic.

As an instrumental album it's vaguely impressive, but overall it's incomplete and lacks the pop touch to transform things from cerebral to listenable.

Moments do [stand alone]--instrumental 'Enrolment' is dark, stark and almost krautrocky, while closer 'Graduation' lilts with beautiful melancholy--yet, devoid of its context, it all feels somewhat banal.

This, for all the fighting talk, has the feel of a lightweight flailing around for another KO.

After a few listens, just when these songs should be beginning to grip, you get the creeping sensation Black’s slick production chops are essentially papering over flimsy songs.

Instead of bashing critics away with brilliant tunes, they find themselves defining faceless bluster-rock.

Mawkish and messy.

Better moments appear when they get a bit ballsier: 'On The Radio' and 'As Four' are jingly upbeat numbers that show they haven't spent all their in-between album down time crying into their pillows. [4 Mar 2006, p.29]

Ducktails have been labeled ‘chillwave’ and ‘hypnagogic pop’ due to their naval-gazing appeal. Sadly that appeal is lacking from this release, as is any sense of urgency, leaving Wish Hotel languishing in the middle of nowhere.

For the most part The Constant boils down to a thin chart gruel, too lumpenly pitched between the Carling Academies and the cattle-grid nightclubs to leave a mark.

Beneath the patina of skeezy Freshers’-Week-LOLZ lyrics (“got a water-bottle of whiskey in my handbag”) lies a talent.

If it weren't for the stalker-punk of 'Pussywillow' and 'Time Passing', both glowering oddly from the mess and nodding towards early B-52s, we'd shove this in the wardrobe.

[Rjd2] has moved away from sample-based instrumental hip-hop, throwing in gently psychedelic Beatles-y songcraft and live instruments to achieve a jack-of-all-trades sound that, while perfectly pleasant, is done better by Beck.

From there on in, though, it's ploddingly lightweight.

It’s all jam and no croissant, sadly.

While its synthetic atmospheres initially intrigue... The music wavers indecisively between structure and formlessness, ending up as curiously misshapen objects, half-finished designs.

Alas, it's unlikely that the applause will stretch to actually wanting to listen as the looping metallic effects, heart-attack drums and seemingly played-backwards female vocals confuse more than impress.

While their true believers might not mind the record’s overall lack of variety, for anyone new to the band there’s little on None The Wiser to separate them from the indie-rock chaff.

Sadly, The (I)NC have mistaken the ultra-safe sound of maximum R&B for the scream of revolution. [24 Jul 2004, p.49]

Too often, ¡Tré! falls back on a formula--fast, box-ticking choruses fashioned from chords you can count on the fingers of one hand--that Green Day have pretty much stretched to breaking point.

If it’s your introduction to them, there’s likely just about enough to convince you to dig a little further. ... But if you’re a survivor of the ‘00s indie scene, there are no new tricks here that’ll stump you. The by-the-numbers feel of ‘Four Leaf Clover’ makes us feel like the unlucky ones, and ‘Tesco Disco’ should have been left in the reduced section.

It does little to either push Turner forward or tell these stories satisfactorily.

Gone are the fizzy sun-drenched hooks and pint-chucking riffs, and in their place are mawkish vocals, melodramatic breaks and dreary lyrics.

There are far too many children’s voices, snatches of birdsong, glissandi of saccharine strings, and always the half-heard, half-sensed thwack of Frisbee upon social media manager.

'Plans' is produced within an inch of its shiny, whitebread life and the Cutie seem to have lost their faux-naive subtleties, becoming the non-thinking man's Coldplay along the way. [27 Aug 2005, p.74]

Their rootsy rattle'n'roll fails to connect with anything more grabbing than a vague lyrical nostalgia.

Their default position is to panel it: hard-driving Zep-worship so unvarying in its pace that Everyday Demons comes on like one long undead riff plus a lot of yawled guff about about being an ‘Evil Man’ with ‘Demon Eyes.'

An affectionate, fuzzy-felt melodic alt.country rocking affair with sugarcane barbed lyrics. [26 Jun 2004, p.54]

A slow slog through a murky alternate dimension, from a band who made their name on vibrancy and experimentation, Inside The Rose is frustratingly lacking in both.

All we learn from these wispy solo offerings is that Lemonheads songs are not improved by persistent cassette hiss and background noise.

Radio-friendly insipidness.

It's a bit of a mess.

Amid the smartly rendered pastiche of this debut, Bainbridge references Prince and Janet Jackson, yet turns those joyous sounds unpleasantly arch.