The Strypes maturing isn’t surprising or disappointing, but the loss of the identity that made their ascent so startling is. That it seems to have been swallowed up by an unoriginal and dated indie sound is all the more galling.

Friendly Fires remain knowingly cheesy and in-your-face and their Technicolor live shows will continue to thrill regardless. The worst part of ‘Inflorescent’ is that you won’t hate it; you’ll just forget you’ve even listened to it.

Identity is everything in pop, but the majority of this record serves only to bury what made Gwen Stefani unique in the first place.

As if the macho posturing wasn't bad enough, 'Haunted Cities' is also a mess musically. [2 Jul 2005, p.64]

If there's one thing that this Arizonan four-piece have been masters of since their inception in the early '90s, it's consistently possessing the over-bearing sentimentality of a teenage girl. Their seventh studio album certainly doesn't veer very far from their past emotional sensibilities.

As uncharismatic as its creator, it's certainly boring, but no more so than anything Richard Ashcroft has come up with.

There's no reason on God's green earth why anybody should want this record.

Opening track ‘Petrichor’ is certainly a trial, layering ominously ringing notes with clarinet blasts and coming on like the soundtrack to your worst nightmares, while the rest of the five-track record flits between welcoming and uncomfortable.

Unsurprisingly, when the sax is told to sit in the corner and eat less pick’n’mix, and the rest of the band get a turn, the quality rises.

The problem is, when you project a futuristic, magical and otherworldly image, you’d better have the sounds to match. And unfortunately, Ice On The Dune is a four-to-the-floor electro-pop album that has literally nothing to do with the cheesy fable invented to go with it.

Brandy is on fine form throughout, purring pillow talk and murmuring sweet nothings to anyone insane enough to listen. Now she loves him, now she doesn't. Really, it's too much.

Like Eminem, Williams is desperate to give his own spin on tabloid coverage and determined to prove himself as human as the rest of us, but incapable of letting us forget he's a star. Except Eminem is the voice of a generation while Robbie Williams is just the voice of Robbie Williams, and while Eminem has Dre, Robbie has a ramshackle posse of musicians roped in to create this album's (wait for it) 'spontaneous' live sound.

The nuance and specificity of his last album’s songwriting is largely absent; instead ‘Autumn Variations’ is akin to aimlessly swiping through Instagram, blurry snaps of followers’ leafy happenings whizzing past in a distracted daze.

Young ends up smothered by unconvincing soundscapes on all but two acoustic tunes that stand out by virtue of actually not sounding like a hurricane.

Elephants on Acid is a frustrating listen, flitting between the unbeatable glory of Cypress Hill’s 90s and the eventual journey into middling experimental rap that followed.

Moby has created an album full of saccharine strings, endless loops and narcoleptic synths. The mind boggles.

He's terribly earnest. [4 Nov 2006, p.35]

Unfortunately, Lupine Howl's debut long-player errs on the side of the canine, wolvish thrills hidden behind some positively vegetarian noodling.

A curious hybrid, channelling both Bruce Springsteen's 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town' and Hendrix's 'Electric Ladyland' into proper classic rock ('Cherokee Werewolf') moments, but elsewhere sounding a bit elevator music.

The truth is that metal fans used to have a word for music like this, and that word is wimpy. [1 Oct 2005, p.45]

Save for the brief reprieves of the barbed, anti-everything 'Words I Never Said' and the historical rewrite of 'All Black Everything', Lasers walks a fine line between conscious hip-hop and sleepwalking.

But trying to be something you are obviously not does have its downfalls, the main one being - true colours are never easy to hide. Early on, songs such as 'Take Care Of Me', and 'I'm Keepin' You', have a guarded and helpless feel to them. She sounds even less confident and seems to provide a glimpse of inner pain.

For All The Dogs- his third solo LP in as many years – not only feels tiring, but sounds tired too.

Wilson's voice is a sorry wisp of what it once was. [19 Jun 2004, p.57]

Here they're going through the motions, missionary style, with mechanical jangly pop and the wince-inducing triteness of Cosentino's lyrics.

Underclass Hero they've gone straight for the commercial mother lode, pitching their sound almost equidistantly between 'The Black Parade' and 'American Idiot' (insert your own 'parade of idiots' gag here).... If you already own those albums, why waste your time with this?

Kasher wrote this as the soundtrack to his screenplay, but on this evidence it could debut on The Hallmark Channel.

Red is more a poor parody of the genre than a booty shaker.