The songs are flat and unoriginal rock.

There are sublime moments here, and occasionally the interplay is breathtaking. This is pretty rare however, which leaves the rest of the record sounding just as you’d imagine it would, which isn’t a bad thing, just not at the levels of creativity we’ve come to expect.

The beautiful melodies and harmonies don’t actually go anywhere, they just kind of float in and out of earshot, failing to develop or do anything harmonically interesting.

As a whole, it leaves you thinking that Bobby Conn could have, if he wanted to, made a seminal underground record.

Great art must provoke or inspire you, and I’m sorry to all the folks out there “awash” in Eluvium’s dreamy “soundscapes” of pure “emotion” and “beauty”, but this record does neither.

The Bird and the Bee end up sounding like the soundtrack to some glossy drama about a bunch of over privileged kids living in Notting Hill.

One good single does not a great album make, and unfortunately, the rest of the record becomes pretty tedious, pretty quickly.

The overall effect is of an album written and recorded on prozac that never achieves the emotional highs or the lows needed to make this kind of country soul great.

It’s confident and cohesive, but the precision may not be the Gossip’s ideal sound.

Slogging through the whole disc for the few shining moments just isn’t worth it.

A compelling failure.

The excellent-to-annoying song ratio on this album is definitely high. Still, their first record was solid from start to finish, and this one smacks so much more of Lennon/McCartney than Kapranos/McCarthy.

Frankly, Love Kraft sounds like a different band, which would be fine, if it wasn’t so less loveable and not nearly as bizarre.

It sounds like good musicians doing a rush job, kind of like Blood on the Tracks without the spellbinding genius.

Inexplicably, predictably, Daft Punk have become the first band to produce a retro post-parody of their own work.

If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard before, you won’t be disappointed – all the darkness, grime and perversion is here or implied.... But if you’re looking for variation, innovation, or thematic depth, it’s unlikely you’ll find it here.

Those in search of classic Barlow would do far better to dig out their battered old copies of Bakesale.

Both pared down and unengaging at the same time, this appears to be a dead end.

They write some good tunes, and they have some appropriately strident abuse for lyrics. But there’s not enough for an album.

In their insistence on trying to mix quirky, quiet electronica with beer-swilling pop, without the two informing each other, Athlete too often fall into a formulaic and predictable model.

The Runaway Found is to be filed alongside Coldplay, Starsailor and Snow Patrol.

There are two great tracks here, three solid ones, and five complete duds.

No matter how cliched and predictable this record gets, there are always some undeniable hooks to lure you back in before your patience wears thin.

Although Trev gives Stuart Murdoch's songs a freshness and clarity that is entirely complimentary, the decision to unleash a flurry of TV melodrama string arrangements or flashy showbiz brass on half the songs leads to results that range from tolerable over-egging at best and annoying inanity at worst.

At least they're better than The Vines.

It's just comfortable and pleasant enough to convince yourself to stick around - never good enough to be satisfying, nor bad enough to be disappointing.

Rather than being enjoyable, listening to Breathe in its entirety soon becomes a chore.

Neither hot nor shit; it's one of those albums you might buy on impulse and be neither disappointed nor overwhelmed by.