This being Courtney, there’s also an emotional rawness to ‘America’s Sweetheart’ which you’ll either love or be repelled by.

The truth is, though, there's just a lack of magic, a lack of something special going on. It's not bad. It's not good.

The beats are slick and the vocals flawless.

'Ultra Payloaded' is largely sub-U2.

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’s decent in places but it’s just… you know that feeling you get when someone you love is so wracked with pointless worry that you just want to shake them and shake them until they snap out of it?

It’s only when he plays to his strengths that On My One comes into its own.

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.

It eases up on the rigorous deconstructivist tendencies that have so permeated the last two 'Lab records, taking a cue instead from the carefree effervescence typical of recent live encounters.

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

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

More often than not Origins falls flat, with insipid choruses and melodramatic refrains. Big, bold and a little bit naff, this is another bread and butter album from a mindbogglingly huge group.

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

Because a grand and fabulous mode of theatre pervades everything about this band, you’re often a few degrees off completely connecting.

The results on their 10th studio album are pleasingly baffling.

At its best 'Riot City Blues' is dumb, fun and silly. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]

You'll find nothing more despicable this year. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

The overriding feel is of an album just too jaded, too joyless to truly count as a return to form.

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

We’re all for people celebrating the music they love free from boundaries of race and that, but there’s something inescapably grating about hearing a German/English newspaper heiress wittering on about fucking Babylon in thick patois. Crushingly disappointing.

Things limp from bad to tedious with 'White Noise', a song so passé it just bought its first shares in ITV Digital.

This experimental concoction Redd delivered is a hit-or-miss.

The thing that's not missing here is songs. [18 Jun 2005]

Bread And Circuses isn't bad enough to be s death knell, but neither is it good enough to be their commercial rebirth.

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.

‘=’ adds up to another album on which Sheeran comes off like a millennial Lionel Richie – namely, a very gifted singer-songwriter who’s sometimes sunk by his saccharine streak.

Like a modern empowered woman, Keane are obsessed with ‘having it all’. Juggling a career, great hair and kids equates for them to making safe, dowdy AOR while giving the finger to those who call them safe, dowdy AOR.

They’ve possibly succeeded in alienating the casual fan with the brief moments of nastiness that are here.

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.

BE’] is certainly an improvement on ‘Different Gear...’, but it’s more of a tentative step in the right direction than a great leap forward.

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.

Where Black's muse was once shrieked and otherworldly, it's now distinctly earth-bound. [17 Jun 2006, p.37]

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

This may well get those girls on the dancefloor but it crucially lacks the subtle depth to give it that all-important soul.

Still Flyin’ are a silly, dumb blast of a bash worth attending.

Anna falls frustratingly short of hitting the back of the net.

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

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.

Harris has distilled all of the synth-popping, amp-busting sounds of electroclash and disco-punk into a complete set of proper pop uppers.

Laura Marin and Quinn Luke cram excessive lyrics into songs such as 'Shake', creating stodge instead of sleekness.

Doherty is actually flirting with optimism on Sequel To The Prequel.

OK, here's some track titles - 'Too Little Too Late', 'Never Do Anything', 'Pinch Me' - and, guess what, THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK! Not just Weller, Ashcroft or Belle & Sebastian sucky but Mike & The Mechanics, Tin Machine and, yes, Hootie And The Blowfish sucky.

Sadly, as 'Balls' proves, age has inexplicably withered Sparks' bow-legged muse; where once was genre-bending acid eclecticism and inspired wit, Sparks now seem content to dole out tired, tinny electro-pop and unfunny puns.

That this debut tries for so much and almost achieves it all is to be applauded. However, in trying to run before they can walk, DIOYY have missed out on making the classic this could have been.

The musical landscape has changed since Fall Out Boy’s Warped Tour days in the mid-’00s, and so have they. As Mania shows, it’s probably for the best.

It’s only on the closing ‘Money Money’ that he sounds like any sort of rebel at all, upping the pace dramatically for a chunk of smoke-spewing Motörhead ‘battle rock’, railing against the seditious lure of materialism.

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.

A mini-classic of magpie pop. [21 Jan 2006, p.35]

Collections is a confident and professional album, not all that different to 'Acolyte'. And it's not different enough.

s. The result is a delightful tribute to The Beatles and a record that has made so many turn on, tune in and drop out.

'This New Day' is, by Embrace's own standards, a triumphant album indeed. [25 Mar 2006, p.35]

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.

Their all-or-nothing ambition is exhilarating, however raw the execution.

'Ariels,' which never raises above shuffling pace, is beautiful in places. [28 Aug 2004, p.56]

[They] not only resemble hoity-toity Fields Of The Nephilim lookalikes but are just as godawful to listen to.

The band now find themselves caught between soft rock and a very hard-to-love place indeed.

The album as a whole saunters and bounces along.

The problem is, while the music is as violently powerful as ever, the rage, anger and lyrical bite are starting to sound seriously forced.

This is a brilliant album that will no doubt top some ‘best of 2008’ lists, but it’s hard to work out if it’s a one-off or not.

It traverses a spacious, synth-dusted soundworld many future-dreampop miles from their girl-group and grit beginnings; the ambition will be a sonic shock to those who wanted the band to stay the 'working-class heroes' they wryly joke about being. It shouldn't, really.

Peppered with hip-hop connections (E-40, Ghostface Killah, Freeway), equally informed by raw Chicago house and the riff-worshipping of Jesse’s previous (DFA 1979), and finally free of the omnipresent vocoder, it’s near-essential stuff.

More worryingly, there's a nagging sense that he's decided to dress it up in grandiose, emotive sentiments simply to camouflage a lack of real emotional investment.

When Khaled does make magic happen, it’s plain to see his brilliance – as when he pairs H.E.R. with a dancehall-infused backdrop on ‘We Going Crazy’, utilising the singer’s silken vocals in a way we’ve not really heard before. But, as with all Khaled albums, there are plenty of misses too. The low points here come when you can’t really hear Khaled’s imprint at all.

It’s not until ‘Kids Are Growing Up’ the album’s 20th and final track, that Howard attempts to reflect on anything but heartbreak and fame. .... It feels like an emotional breakthrough for Howard, but it comes just a little too late.

Only ‘The English Summer’ and ‘Pink Lemonade’ bear much resemblance to the antsy, fidgety post-punk The Wombats made their name with, and both end up falling somewhat flat. In its place are the sleek, synth-laden likes of ‘Be Your Shadow’ and ‘Headspace’ --precision-engineered for mass appeal, but no less effective for it.

It’s interesting from a certain geeky perspective, but it's never quite as satisfying or substantial as you want it to be.

Once again the rhyming is painfully funny, the delivery fresh, and the music catchy.

Whilst stylistically Nasir may well have plenty of strong moments, its contradictions make it a difficult, problematic listen: it’s the silences on here which so often deafen.

While it is maddeningly catchy in places and well put together, its defining characteristic is a conservative streak that sits strangely with this most anarchical of bands.

The Bundles’ kooky childishness and playground melodies will beguile and irritate in equal measure.

Capped with Dan Devine's vocals – a scream as angry as it is distraught – this is despair with a backbeat, and punk as it should be: courageously self-destructive.

Britney and 'Britney' still works best when making a good pop cheese and dance sandwich.

Who knows which Miley Cyrus will emerge after the rootsy and real Younger Now, but we recommend enjoying Country Miley for as long as she lasts.

‘Think I Need It Too’, the best thing they’ve done in ages. And yet, much as we want to love it, the rest is a pulled punch.

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

Everything you hear is supposedly conjured from Yoav's guitar. It's a cute trick but as the album storms ahead it becomes a distracting and frustrating gimmick that sells the songs short. [15 Mar 2008, p.50]

‘Ways To Phrase A Rejection’ proves the four-piece do a good enough job of recreating the kitchen-sink narratives of the era, but where they really excel is when they slip back into the 21st century.

It isn’t even that the songs are bad – it’s worse than that: they’re largely forgettable. Gone are the pithy couplets and catchier-than-a-rash hooks, replaced with lacklustre imitations.

He hasn't always got the tunes, but this effort shows off more than enough ideas to keep King Monkey swinging for a good while yet.

All this greedy grasping means the London newcomers can’t really get a firm grip on anything, meaning Bad Blood comes out with about as much identity as a Facebook commenter without a profile picture.

Marvellous. [5 Nov 2005, p.45]

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

'The Sound of Silence', the Simon & Garfunkel cover, is easily the best song on the record, despite Draiman singing his parts like he’s The Count from Sesame Street.

The problem is Shawn Christensen's bellowingly unsubtle vocal style, which batters every last vestige of restraint out of its way as it strains for greater heights of veins-bulging volume-as-passion.

It’s a collection of snapshots of a band stretching towards a brilliantly kaleidoscopic, eclectic new sound--and almost reaching it.

The album could do with being at least half of its 70 minutes, to cut out the self-indulgent meandering.

Size has merely moved from the coffee tables of the last century into the elevators of the next. [30 Oct 2004, p.65]

While TIM is unlikely to win any existing EDM-deniers over, its addition to Avicii’s back catalogue will come as great comfort to both the fans and family of the late DJ.

For the most part, this album, with its Avatar references (‘Lost Freestyle’) and hilariously bad Kim Jong Un punchlines (from ‘Tanasia’: “Chillin, we’re starting to think about children / And bringing them in the world with Kim Jong Illin'”), just sounds dated and like something Nas didn’t need to release.

Honesty is often lost in overproduction, both in the music and in his lyricism. It is listenable, summery and occasionally thought-provoking, but tired in its laboured pushes for emotional sincerity.

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

A handy "best of the Stereophonics--for now." [8 Apr 2006, p.39]

Sure, there’s a residual whiff of mediocrity here, but Carl’s clearly found something else in himself as part of this new gang, and as Dirty Pretty Things’ music grows in assurance, it appears Pete will remain a solitary man for some time yet.

This time with their best songs since "Tell Me When" in 1995. In more ways than one, timeless.

A few tunes--like the Afro-flecked ‘LA Calling’ or ‘Everywhere’--pass muster, but the whole thing is about as cosmic as a hairdresser who’s just read in Grazia that hippies are ‘in’ this summer.

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?

ts revolving synth pattern revolves relentlessly, before bleeding into the aptly named ‘Dreamy.’

Yet cringingly vibed-up first words aside – where we're also leaving the Eurovision cheese of 2 Hearts--the follow-up to 2007's debut, Idealism, is not all bad.