More often than not on Future Dust, they find themselves adopting a tame version of what they could produce. Limp and lifeless, Future Dust is an album from a band who can give much, much more.

Weighed down by star power, which eclipses Pop Smoke, ‘Faith’ feels more disingenuous than its predecessor.

[Songs Of Innocence] has only a handful of standouts.... This is a serious mis-step that might win a week's worth of good publicity, but could foreshadow a year's worth of bad.

As a solo artist who’s far eclipsed the output of his former epoch-defining band, no one can criticise Brown for trying. But he can definitely do better.

Every single one of the lyrics is either a really, really lame Spacemen Zero drug innuendo (the – hey! – 10-minute epic ‘’Half-State’), about ‘twisted’ love (the – hey! – ‘stripped down’ ‘Sweet Feeling’s Gone’) or mentions “highways”.

There’s nothing game-changing about The New Classic, just recycled hustlin’ tropes and an ugly, nasal double-time flow overcompensating for mediocre wordplay.

But damn those cruel hormones - Hanson's collective balls have MmmDropped, and the giddy rush of adolescence seeks to mutate Mercury's finest investment into a trio of crack-voiced hulks.

There's little here that's moves on from the kind of trip-hop balladeers that abounded in the late '90s or indeed the singer-songwriters that Sheeran admires such as Damien Rice or James Morrison.

For the most part, ‘Dark Lane Demo Tapes’ is business as usual for Drake, who plays it safe and falls back on familiar terrain. ... But it’s not just a case of recycling here. There are some proper duds too.

Made In The AM doesn’t really change anything for One Direction; it's simply another slick set of pop songs designed to strike a chord with their teenage fanbase and win over a few older fans along the way.

The Wombats have aimed low, and in its own special way, This Modern Glitch is a triumph for mediocrity.

Spark is right about one thing at least: this album is boring, and everyone who says otherwise is a fucking liar.

In short Tha Carter IV flops not because it's straight-up bad, but because it's boring.

There's just an unavoidable sense here of a band who aren't quite sure what their purpose is anymore.

It's just that it all feels so pointless and half-arsed that it's impossible to muster more than an apathetic shrug in judgement.

New Jersey's The Static Jacks haven't got the most ambitious creative palette.

Mostly Americana and mostly unremarkable. [29 Apr 2006, p.37]

It’s all nicely polished, but there’s nothing underneath.

APTBS mask a lack of ideas or something to say by inventing louder volumes than everyone else.

The departure of backing vocalist Ryan Richards robs the band of one of their dimensions, and come the lunk-headed thrash of ‘Grey’ you’re left wondering if this renewed heaviness is there to paper over a lack of ideas.

Make no mistake, this is a poor, poor album.... Frustratingly, it's a waste of talent. For Snoop has lined up an array of musical back-up here (Swizz Beats, Timbaland, Eve, Master P: all marshalled by Dr Dre), and his is one of the most distinctive voices in rap, but he chooses simply to repeat himself with it.

The more you delve into it the less you find, because it’s all affectation.

It's functional, but dispensable.

What used to feel like surfing amid the cumulonimbus suddenly feels like snorkling in soup.

Further success should elude them. That, it seems, is firmly restricted to the past.

'Light Grenades' offers little change to Incubus' formula of having Brandon Boyd perform his brand of strained vocal gymnastics. [2 Dec 2006, p.30]

Bangarang, a stopgap EP ahead of his debut album later in the year, still fails to confirm whether his unashamed populism is deeply naive or profoundly cynical.

Despite the odd catchy moment such as ‘Die Happy, Die Smiling’ you’re left thinking that those yodelling fucking elf-botherers Sigur Ros have got a lot to answer for.