A Victorian freak show with a cracking voice, but just a few stolen Prince and Stevie Wonder tunes, Har Mar Superstar seems to be humiliating himself and reaching for the lowest common denominator in search of lays and some fleeting personal success.

If The Delays had succeeded in making the latter five-sixths of their debut as wondrous as the first portion, they could be credited with fair miracles.

Timbaland has revealed himself to be a crass, stupid, venal prick who is pretty much talentless outside of production for other people.

Startling for all the wrong reasons.

Supporters have argued that this is " a perfect comedown album". In the sense that you'll feel like you're coming down even if you haven't taken anything, yes.

There are many more interesting artists out there doing the kind of thing Jamie does with more panache and originality with voices that don't make me want to throw myself under an underground train, but they're not from Wimbledon.

'Lions' is a mediocre album.

The songs are pretty, the guitars are mellow, all complimentary and measured; dull, in other words.

An album of repetitive, insipid riffs: eleven tracks flakier than chippings and more irritating to your facial passages than toxic MDF sawdust.

A rather predictable and mundane package.

As welcome as emphysema.

What once felt like maverick defiance on the part of the 'Shop now leaves them looking directionless, with Tjinder sounding increasingly like an unattractive combination of smugness and bitterness.

An album of dull, vocal virtuoso ballads.

So there are a couple of standout tracks, and the rest falls on its arse.

You can smell the impotent melodic desperation a mile off.

A very slickly produced record that's practically unlistenable.

This air of superiority is pervasive on 'Our Earthly Pleasures', which is a pity when you consider contemporaries such as Franz Ferdinand can do clever without it getting in the way of the fact all they're really doing is making good pop records.

There are no great ideas, or stunning movements, just ego-driven mush set to chocolate box arrangements. Oh, and a tendency towards the kind of vocals that Pink Floyd or Chris Rea might have been proud of.

Seriously poor, lowest common denominator bullshit.

If this was the work of a new artist it's debatable whether it would even have seen the light of day, and it's certainly unlikely we'd've felt the need to even comment on it.

So while Hamilton Leithauser believes he's made a record comparable to the legendary 'The Basement Tapes', it seems almost churlish to point out that you'd be far better off digging out a copy of 'The Basement Tapes' and listening to it, than going out and purchasing 'A Hundred Miles Off' and listening to it once.

Not even the added muscle of playaz like Kid Koala, Afrika Bambaataa, Plug 3, Prince Paul and Mike Patton manage to lift this album above the low level pastiche it seems happy to be.

Kaiser Chiefs have absolutely no talent or taste for innovation.

It feels like a mix-tape or compilation, an in-joke or doodle between the participants rather than a completed work for public consumption.

This is a dog of an album, by anyone's standards, but if you play it next to 'If You're Feeling Sinister', which we did, then it is the sort of dog that shits all over the kitchen and has constant mange.

While their political musings... are well intended, the lyrics are so heinously bad and the music so incredibly earnest and bombastic, you're tearing it out of your CD player after five or six tracks.

Someone should put Blink 182 out of their misery.

About as boring as a record can be.