While the record isn’t perhaps as instantly impressive as Scale or Multiply, there’s much to enjoy on The Third Hand for an appreciator of the finer points of this thing we call pop music.

Every song on the tracklist is fluid, fresh, and endued with a sense of fun.

The anthemic choruses largely remain but are endlessly unsatisfying and constrained. Given the unmistakeably grittier and less atmospheric qualities of this album it was the right to attempt to temper them; I'm just not so sure they pulled it off.

It is that sense of self that prevails over the pop sheen of Rolling Papers and makes it worth more than a passing listen.

Every song on here comes from a collaboration from a different source, or a different trend that Legend is hopping on. There’s nothing personal here. ... Bigger Love’s second half has painful trap pop (Don’t Walk Away), plastic soul (Remember Us, Always), and a piano ballad closer with no defining traits or features (Never Break), all in classic John Legend fashion.

The album is not an abject failure however, as there are bits, just tiny bits, of it that give off the faintest wisps of something more.

Synths take a higher precedence this time round: it’s an indie-pop record, far from their post-hardcore roots; indeed Living in Song sounds like an Architecture in Helsinki knockoff. But even when you can hear the band trying out new things, it simply sounds turgid.

In the midst of all the new-fangled electricity that positions Mi Ami for creative growth, there is a spiritedness and innovation to their past output that is missing with this new device.

This album may have been a growing pain in their attempt to evolve past their initial signature baroque pop, but it sounds like they missed a few steps that needed to be taken.

Now he's making albums about recovering from addiction, sounding worn out and uninspired. Dude needs to find a muse or something.

Apparently The Wombats only managed to write the one song for the album and so have decided to just repeat it ten times, offering little-to-no variation in tone or tempo--although to be fair to them, they do stick a different synth preset on for each song so you can tell them apart.

Clock Opera have delivered a debut which, just about, delivers.

There are no real standout tracks, it is a four song EP after all and electronica has a slight tendency to blend into one long reverby track. But as a piece, it moves so softly, so deep and so colourful.

Excise a few tracks and La Liberacion would make a good soundtrack to the summer, or what's left of it at least

This third effort is trying too hard to innovate by, once again in Editors fashion, obviously borrowing from somewhere else.

So Long Forever has a knack of sounding nothing like your prototypical debut album, with no sign of any unsanded edges or rawness. Instead, the album’s sound is that of a band that have honed their sound over a number of exponentially strong releases.

Euphoric///Heartbreak is not an easy listen--as I've already alluded to, it's a convincing notion that this four-piece remain incapable of that--and while it is more theatrically anthemic than the first album, it is feels equally credible and sincere.

People Problems is something the band can be proud of, and it's a great point to move forward from. It's not a breathtaking album, but in the end, it doesn't need to be.

It may be a bit dull and overlong (a three to five song EP of this would have sufficed), but he doesn’t care. It’s his music and he’ll do what he damn well pleases with it.

For Long Way Down is an album that, while often samey and, in the grand scheme of things, says next to nothing, heralds the arrival of a highly talented artist.

While Perry finds the occasional moment of quality here (Smile and Tucked both feel like the best possible music we could get from Katy Perry in 2020), Smile is an album searching for an identity—and when it fails, it falls back on lazy writing.

A 55-minute mess called Curtis, undoubtedly one of this year’s worst releases.

There's no debating in my mind that Digitalism have the potential to produce an album even better than Idealism. But sadly, I Love You, Dude is not it.

More than anything, Big Talk reflects the Vegas background of its middling maestro.

It's not quite bad enough to be dubbed an honest failure, but it's flaws are too debilitating for me to recommend blowing a tenner on a copy.

It is samey, ugly and spectacularly stupid at the same time.

Fresh Air and Midnight Snack. Sagar sounds lethargic and detached, which may be the mood that he's going for; but when he sticks to the same tired motifs, it's hard to feel any more excited than him.

As a longtime fan of Usher, this album has great moments and also lagging tunes.