Sadly most of these forgettable songs tend to evaporate on impact. [Apr 2012, p.101]

Even utterly dedicated Albarn fans will be hard-pushed to force themselves to play it more than once. [Jun 2012, p.107]

Pretty much everyone sleepwalks through a cabaret mix of standards and new songs. [May 2013, p.102]

This time there is too little that snags the ear. [Nov 2016, p.114]

There is something dispiriting about trawling through so many songs which show glimpses of lucidity, even brilliance, but always seem to either nod off or descend into chaos by the end. [Jan 2006, p.120]

The atypical melodic 'English Rose' aside, there's little to distingusih Motorizer from its 19 predecessors. [Oct 2008, p.149]

Aladdin could more properly be called Peter Pan, the work of a boy who never really grew up. It doesn't help that it comes with a sickly, stoner-friendly concept attached. [Jun 2016, p.111]

In accommodating all those guests Mariam too often has to take a back seat, so destroying much of the couple's special chemistry, the very thing that sets them apart. [May 2012, p.90]

Bursts of corrosive techno that have all the instrumental variety of a car alarm. [Sep 2016, p.108]

While Glenn gamely belts out every song like it's a Broadway audition, his band's appeal remains some distance short of universal. [Aug 2014, p.111]

With no fresh ideas or strong melodies to lighten the mood, [Sadier's] icy hauteur makes for bland and featureless listening. [Apr 2006, p.120]

[Mangini's] speed is not in much evidence on A Dramatic Turn of Events, though, where prog-metal riffs give way far too easily to pianos and technical indulgence. [Oct 2011, p.120]

When she stops bawling (on Colors), Potter reveals herself as an affecting vocalist who deserves better than the barroom. [Sept. 2010, p.118]

It's the sort of manic outsider funk that succeeds or fails on the basis of how charming you find Nguyen's delivery. [Apr 2013, p.95]

Turn It Up is a wasted opportunity, weighed down by beige soul ballads and cheap-sounding R&B that could have been cranked out for any talent show contestant. [Oct 2009, p.113]

Unfortunately, Collapse Into Now is not nearly as consistent, vital or accomplished as either Out Of Time or Automatic For The People. [Apr 2011, p.94]

With each mid-tempo riff swamped by syrupy harmonies and machine-tooled strings, this is metal with the edges filed down and all the soul sucked out. [May 2006, p.128]

Where they were once a glorious mess, here they are simply a mess. [Apr 2007, p.114]

Embarrassing. [Dec 2003, p.134]

The feel is of youngish bucks cruelly taunting their 64-year-old granny. [Nov 2004, p.127]

A moribund collection of ragged but never rugged songs. [Jan 2004, p.114]

Half-written, overproduced songs collide with grandiose ideas, and the self-indulgence is astonishing as sounds and samples appear with little grace. [Aug 2004, p.116]

A serious let-down. [Oct 2006, p.119]

There are so many idiotically composed adverts between tracks, you wonder if you haven't tuned into a local radio station by accident. [Sep 2003, p.99]

A disappointment. [Nov 2004, p.124]

Another dollop of rock sludge with a remarkably honest title. [Aug 2003, p.115]

Tough to endure even once. [Aug 2003, p.110]

They wouldn't be totally awful if Client A could actually sing. [Oct 2003, p.103]

Three tracks in you realise with horror that [it] is a concept album. Worse, it's a concept album of kitchen-sink dramas about Tony The Milkman and Doris The Housewife set to Saint Etienne's dated indie disco. [Jul 2005, p.120]

The actual effect... is closer to a whinier Duran Duran, with even their slapped bass-driven grooves hobbled by the paper-thin production. [Apr 2005, p.124]

Suffers from the same faults as previous efforts: limp tunes, pompous guitar solos and an overhwlming sense of "Will this do?" [Sep 2003, p.98]

Miserable and insipid. [Dec 2004, p.130]

Contains far too many bland ballads. [Feb 2006, p.105]

As bland as paint. [May 2005, p.110]

Most of it already sounds a decade old. [Dec 2003, p.137]

An album that's--unusually--both disorienting and immensely tedious. [Nov 2012, p.103]

They may still want to party every night, but it would take a Kiss Kasket full of Viagra to animate this limp cock rock. [Dec 2009, p. 116]

A numbing montage of half-formed ideas and too-slick production. [Jul 2003, p.100]

The drab orchestrations offer tepid schmaltz, not romance. [Dec 2002, p.112]

Until they find their own voice, they'll forever be a tribute band. [Mar 2014, p.116]

Their attempts at songwriting here are woeful. [Sep 2007, p.95]

Children moan, accordions groan and Bjork's disembodied voice occasionally growls into earshot. [Sep 2005, p.114]

Joel and Benji Madden's fifth album of anthemic dumbness. [Dec. 2010, p. 110]

It's marooned in novelty. [Apr 2005, p.121]

Where once Of Montreal sparkled, they're now mired in a plodding, asexual beige. [Nov 2013, p.113]

So ill-conceived and shoddily executed it could well finish them off altogether. [Feb 2003, p.102]

A sad waste of everyone's time. [Jun 2009, p.119]

If that hardly sounds like the greatest thing to happen to hip hop in recent times, it's nothing compared to his fourth LP, which is a litany of lazy beats and even lazier rhymes; "Your mama she gets crazy," he instructs on Krazy. [Dec 2009, p. 120]

The problem here isn't sullying Jackson's memory and reputation: he was perfectly capable of doing that himself. The problem is that Michael simply isn't good enough. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]

Nine Track Mind whimpers like a sick kitten. [Mar 2016, p.113]

Singer Jay Gordon spends much of the record predictably preening his way through third-hand Bowie and third-rate Simon LeBon impressions while the band labour on a set of half-baked electro-metal...

Only Haim's contribution to Red Eye enlivens the tedium. [Aug 2013, p.99]

Sloppy, emotion-free, chicken-in-a-basket ballads. [May 2007, p.125]

The only area in which JC tops Justin is cheesy double entendres. [Jun 2004, p.96]

There are no real songs here, only weak gags and unfunny skits. [Jan 2007, p.152]

While the maverick spirit that drives this pair is admirable, it doesn't make the end result any more enjoyable. [Apr 2008, p.102]

[They] continue precisely where they left off on 2002's Static Delusions..., bashing their way through 11 indistinguishable songs without recourse to wit, style or tune. [Jul 2004, p.112]

The title track and Come Out To LA hit home with the impact of a piece of GCSE Social Studies course work. [Apr 2018, p.108]

Numbingly tedious, bashed-out-in-an-afternoon grunt-a-longs about, well, numbingly tedious stuff that we may already have come to term with. [Aug 2012, p.109]

Not good. [Oct 2012, p.106]

A willfully dumb concoction of crotch-grabbing Southern rock workouts and boneheaded strip-joint anthems. [Dec 2007, p.121]

The Unforgiving's rampaging orchestral stabs and hysterical synths, coupled with Sharon den Adel's fevered vocal flourishes, make for awful Euro-pop with the odd distorted guitar. [May 2011, p.115]

They run a schizophrenic gamut of cinematic moods that bleed into one another jammed together into one disorienting hour that reaches its end without any discernible narrative reward. [Dec 2012, p.104]

California Hymn pulls something out of the hat at the end, but Anyway.... is so addled and confused it will likely be in the bin long before then. A real shocker. [Sep 2016, p.111]

Musically, it sucks. [Feb 2005, p.98]

Without Pop The Glock's digitised vocals Hartley sounds like a karaoke version of '80s rapper Roxanne Shante. [Aug 2010, p.126]

A risible attempt to recapture long-vanished glories. [Nov 2007, p.137]

Wretched. [Dec 2003, p.124]

Entirely meritless. [Apr 2013, p.104]

Fatally it offers nothing to suggest a band moving forwards. [May 2013, p.109]

A load of rubbish. [Jul 2012, p.110]

Some rather ordinary, slightly tuneless indie rock. [Jul 2005, p.112]

Ultimately, this 11-track LP is nine songs too long as the rest swill around the bottom of the indie-rock barrel like thin gruel. [Apr 2014, p.121]

Middle-age is no excuse for such an unforgivably bland collection of over-emoted love songs. [Dec 2002, p.102]

There's a sense that he's trying to pass off a lack of ability as some kind of artistic statement. [Aug 2009, p.113]

The band sound bored. [Dec 2012, p.103]

Son of Richard and Linda. Acorns can fall far... [March 2011, p. 115]

So migraine-inducing that the Crazy Frog would seem like light relief. [May 2006, p.129]

Most disappointing of all... is the drab nature of Ryder's contribution: slurred, incoherent, and largely based around drug stories and lots of swearing. [Aug 2003, p.103]

Anyone believing that Bush betrayed grunge's punk promise will feel like reaching for a shotgun. [Aug 2008, p.135]

Alas, they're not very good. [Feb 2005, p.102]

They fail to relocate it [their exuberance] on the follow-up, which if anything, is even drearier. [Sep 2011, p.104]

Give this album a very wide berth. [Feb 2011, p.120]

There are no highlights. Appalling. [Sep 2011, p.110]

At least Nickelback know how to write a tune. [Jul 2003, p.104]

It's one boringly pedestrian plod after another. [Jun 2012, p.104]

Duets guns unerringly for lounge-y stasis, swerving any trace of the funk, grit or bile which make Morrison such a unique treasure.... Criminal. [May 2015, p.108]

This debut has her trilling like Mariah Carey on fluffy R&B tunes. [Oct 2003, p.103]

An excruciating listen. [May 2006, p.129]

This is hollow, pretentious and deeply dull music. [Apr 2007, p.116]

A hideous mess of electro noodling and maddeningly obtuse, tuneless vocals. [May 2006, p.126]