So many tracks slip through your consciousness, particularly with how much he sticks to the formula of chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus. His dullness sucks the life out of typically energetic guests like Playboi Carti, whose feature is less Die Lit and more Diluted.

There are a few isolated moments of satisfaction, like the ‘Freres Jacques’-esque guitar melody on ‘Welcome to My Planet’ and the accordion leading into the discombobulating melody on ‘Queen of Koalas,’ but there isn’t a single track that comes together as a complete idea nor is there a single moment where it sounds like Xiu Xiu and Larsen are on the same page.

Carey is making music that concerns itself with nuance, and yet he has made the audio equivalent of cutting a victoria sponge cake with a chainsaw, doing his best to serve it up to a nervous gathering of increasingly swearing nuns.

A perplexingly bloated, often aimless album is both a head-scratcher and a true waste of potential.

Matthewdavid is forever littering these tracks with too many disparate ideas and sometimes you find yourself wishing he'd taken more lessons from his previous LP and realised that less is more.

What it lacks, though, is a sense of purpose, which is the precise thing this new version of Bloc Party needed it to have; they needed to make a convincing case as to why they still deserve your attention. Instead, they picked the worst possible time to lose their nerve, and turn in something so bereft of conviction and new ideas.

The talented likes of Lisa Hannigan and Sharon Van Etten attempt to breathe life into affairs, but there’s no resuscitating a creature that never breathed to begin with. No less, they for some reason decided to draw this death rattle out across their longest album to date, blindly moping through an inexplicably sixty-three minute run time.

For every lightning in a bottle moment of inspiration or fun, there are several misses. His sound might be lighthearted, but it can at least be memorable. (Don’t try to act like ‘Broccoli’ would’ve been as big as it was without Yachty’s help.) He has nothing to prove but not much to show either.

The laziness of lyrical passages, directionless structures, odd lyric rip-offs ('Goon Line' and 'Void' are culprits), and poor mixing works together with the band to hold this record down much lower than its potential.

Turbo Fruits feel weightless, airless. The smooth production only makes the disappointing lack of clarity all the more unfortunate. I don't know who or what this album is for.

Among the 21 tracks of Close It Quietly there is plenty that is amiable and whimsical, pleasant and inoffensive. There is also, however, almost nothing affecting or memorable.

Whether it's their brutal attempt at gloomy chamber pop on 'My Only', their embarrassingly direct ripoff of a My Bloody Valentine track on 'Anymore', or their goofy, oddly timed guitar licks on 'The Garret', The Echo of Pleasure results in being an incredibly vague arena rock statement, one that's hopelessly gasping for life (and critical acclaim). As Berman's vocals have clearly aged, so have his songwriting abilities.

Come at a pace so consistently slow the album's charm begins to ache.

None of the songs here are particularly lengthy, but the way ideas evaporate almost instantaneously makes it a slog of an album. It doesn’t help that one-third of the tracklisting is made up of befuddling interludes, with only one (a reprise of another, no less) offering any intrigue thanks to some well-rendered telephone rings.

There is precious little personality to be found on this dry, pedestrian record, which comes across as a selection of yawn-worthy Adele-rejects rather than a cohesive body of work from a singular artist.

Darren Hayman has undoubtedly done a good thing here, and so it seems a shame that the musical result sounds so uninspiring.

It is like Prince meets The Allman Brothers Band, on an approximate dosage of 40–50ug of acid. ... And that makes it a certified...

Ultimately though, Messier Objects feels like a collector's curio.

Unfortunately after [the first two tracks] the album settles into a post-coital snooze that it doesn't really wake from.

There are a few truly memorable riffs, notably on 'Hum for your Buzz' and 'Bitter Fruit', it's just that overall, this music feels that bit too slick to deliver the 'unease' and 'winking ennui' that the record label copy promised.

Recorded in Los Angeles and produced entirely by Tommy English, most expressions of individuality have been removed and replaced with polished finesse. You are left with eleven songs that are entirely devoid of personality and the delivery only emphasises this.

The hummable, sing-in-the-shower refrains are there, but ultimately, its Wildewoman's lack of identity that limits its appeal.

CrasH Talk is an unfortunate example of what can happen when someone gets the creative validation they’ve desired, only to find themselves at an impasse.

Earrings Off! also features three instrumental tracks, but none of these feel like they add anything to the experience of the album, or its central themes.

Too often, though, this feels like folk music on cruise control despite the attempts to introduce subtle electronic elements to the background of many of the songs, like a Fence Collective recording gone a bit wrong.