Young is still a force to be reckoned with. There is urgency and energy here.

If you came across Robbins and his band playing in a bar, you'd have a great time. In a hushed former church, however, you are left feeling that the reverence bestowed on this charismatic bar-room singer, even if he is an Oscar winning actor-director and a champion of various worthy causes, is a little misplaced.

While the lyrics are too cloying and cliched to mean much, in conjunction with such a button-pushing soundtrack, they still carry the capacity to move.

The single Roar is ruthlessly efficient in its bid to get the drunk and recently dumped member of the girls' night out party up on the table, using her WKD bottle as a microphone, and the rest of the album follows suit: if the ballads are standard issue, the faintly trap-inspired Dark Horse sounds like a hit single, as does Birthday and, for better or worse, the new jack swing parody This Is How We Do.

A bumpy ride, but a diverting one.

Keane rely too heavily on Chaplin's show-stopping vocals, and the radio-friendly simplicity of the lyrics grates.

While the results aren't entirely successful, "Twilight," especially, by Massive Attack's 3D, proves that Lavelle can reimagine 'soul' like no one else.

An unexpectedly toothsome debut.

The fact that they are the strongest efforts here suggests that, despite his admirable ambition, perhaps he should focus on what he does best.

The album floats on shuffling rhythms, wah-wah guitars and catchy hooks, stopping at stations from socially conscious storytelling to fantasies involving space aliens.

Personally, sonically and thematically, Drake seems resistant to change. It’s frustrating: the songs aren’t bad, and in some cases they’re excellent, a reminder of the unflattering emotional honesty that initially set him apart from his peers. However, they also hew to a formula that works for him.

It's very much a lump of coal in the stocking.

It's a fun listen, with shades of Ram-era Paul McCartney, the Stones and Shuggie Otis, full of eccentric funk and boogie captured on vintage instruments.

On the one hand, it's a little hokey: if One Plus One Equals One tried any harder to charm you, it would turn up on your doorstep with a bottle of Fleurie and offer you a footrub. On the other, the songs are Gough's strongest in years.

That mood of indulgence also leads to a surfeit of mellifluous vocals, syrupy beats and billowing, sugary melodies that makes the album cloy.

In striving to prove they're the same artists they always were, Chase and Status have ended up suggesting precisely the opposite.

It seems that in his hurry to vacate the trodden ground of campfire pop, Michael Rosenberg hasn’t really planned where to go. Most of the songs here are almost identical.

if you’re averse to mawkish sentimentality you might be best advised to give the entire genre of country music a wide berth. Besides, there is a genuine emotion amid the corn.

The follow-up to Glynne’s ubiquitous debut is generic Top 40 and soul-pop finished to a high standard.

Living Things feels more like consolidation than advancement, perhaps in an attempt to pacify fans alienated by the new direction, while keeping new converts interested, too.

In fairness, not all the album's ­highlights require the listener to ­temporarily imagine that they're ­listening to a high-school choir....More often, though, if you're prepared to buy into the ­conceit, Glee: the Soundtrack almost lives up to its title.

[Let’s Do It] feels like proof that Diana Ross could still make a great album if she wanted to, if she was steered more carefully, or partnered more sympathetically. But she hasn’t been, and this is the result: Thank You, but no thank you.

The twinkling acoustic songs, bursting with brass, keyboards and fiddle are economic and brimming with sure-footed confidence but Fink's brittle cynicism ultimately leaves Noah & the Whale stranded

Folklore is essentially the sound of an artist taking a risk.

You can see Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded as a great rap album dragged down by pandering, but you could equally see it as a triumph that one of the biggest pop records of the year leads off with a half-dozen tracks of blistering, filthy, idea-jammed hip-hop.

Disc one sounds like the band's Desperado years left out in the rain--damp, shrunken and fetid, with songs such as Guilty of the Crime and Fast Company giving out as much spark as a dying novelty lighter.

Many of these electro-pop-rap tracks sound as though they were recorded with DJs in mind, rather than fans.

Much of this followup sounds like it's aiming to replicate the feel of that radio-friendly unit-shifter [Dominos] rather than the dreamy haze of early songs like Velvet. Occasionally it works.

Their power lies in drummer Pinstripe's jerky rhythms, which propel the band's adventures without lingering anywhere very long, which is sometimes a good thing.

After some so-so self-penned albums, Stone could use some original material anything like as good, but this is a powerful, heartfelt and classy comeback.

The band only vaguely remember the "hardcore" ingredients in emo on the slightly more edgy title track. Maybe everybody's buying it for the pictures.

The album treads repetitive ground.

[The band's] boundless enthusiasm could be teeth-grating even without Stars' overuse of Auto-Tune, but it's hard to dislike such catchy tunes and lyrics that are funny, sincere and oddly moving.

A Joyful Noise is a brave stab at something new.

Granted, much of the record is still given over to quaking ballads like Fingerprint--an area where Adele now has the advantage--but several tracks demand attention.

The romance of it all doesn't play quite so well in Britain, but this album is still a palatable addition to the adult-contemporary genre.

Unapologetically twee.

Ultimately, much of Thank You is a bit of a hotchpotch, after her initial efforts were rejected and main producer Ricky Reed called on to conjure up some hits.

This is music so afraid to be seen as clever or pretentious, so terrified of doing anything that might conceivably alienate the lowest common denominator, that it ends up crushingly prosaic.

Turner prize-nominee Shrigley’s misanthropic worldview-- murderous cavemen, sadistic houseguests and monkeys eating their offspring are among the topics covered--is present and correct, although not everything here benefits from the surreal linguistic twists of his solo work. When he does catch you off guard, it’s splendid stuff.

Many of these songs convey a querulous romance, but while the orchestra a chocolatey smoothness to the sound that renders emotional complexity glossy and neat.

It gives the listener an awful lot to plough through, but anyone willing to persevere will find George Michael's finest work is buried within it.

To be fair, he can croon the stuffing out of the most well-worn covers (Brother Can You Spare a Dime is a searingly emotional trip through several octaves), but it's at the expense of spontaneity.

It has plenty of bracingly dynamic moments--a batucada-enhanced reworking of Samim's Heater, the lurching power of Kano's Reload It, the old-skool exuberance of Spank Rock's Put That Pussy On Me--but moments are all they remain.

It's satisfying enough, and the lyrics hint at some intriguing darkness. It just needs a little more bite.

There are moments that serve to remind you that pop music didn't really come up with anyone to replace Allen during her sabbatical.... Elsewhere, you can sense a certain indecision in the way Allen keeps trying on different musical styles.

Endowed with a decent white-soul voice that recalls Will Young, he and his tunes are never less than easy on the ear.

It's a noisy, highly entertaining 50 minutes.

Nothing here genuinely startles the way Firestarter did in 1996.

Longtime songwriter Max Martin has cooked up a title track that ranks as one of the blandest songs of his career.... Most of the first half carries on in this fashion, with the exception of the strummy anti-bullying ballad Madeleine, a showcase for AJ McLean's sweet voice. The second half is more interesting, making more of their spot-on vocal harmonies.

His raps lay bare his constant inner conflicts, with his garrulous belligerence set to punishing, pugilistic beats.

The Little Ones share their pop predecessors' taste for blossoming melodies and saccharine sentiments. By the end of the album, your face will hurt and you'll be desperate for some Napalm Death.

The Courteeners sound like troglodytes on the rampage.

Mid-tempo guitar rock prevails; so does O'Donoghue's way of raspily soaring through choruses as if his voice has broken free from its moorings.

For the first half of his fifth album, it's business as usual... The second half finds Ludacris maturing swiftly.

Own the Night is mainly notable for the way it papers over emotional cracks (As You Turn Away: "No, we can't be friends/ I don't think I can take seeing you and knowing where we've been") with beige wallpaper.

Guillemots hurl themselves enthusiastically in all directions at once, but rarely land on their feet; good ideas emerge occasionally, but are smothered at birth, and the band's obsession with taking a musical left turn every 30 seconds means they end up chasing their own tail.

What Keane perfects in these stadium-swelling anthems is the meticulous yet ineffable melodic progression that goes straight for the emotional reflex.

RZA’s chosen musical style here appears to be “mid-paced jam band” which hardly helps in enlivening rappers who give off a distinct vibe of puffy middle age. The better tracks – Necklace, Miracle, 40th Street Black--are produced by others.

Sometimes it’s a little empty--Take It All gives little back--but when they hit that melancholy ache just right, it’s electric.

While the sound itself is an upbeat blast of air, it lacks the freshness of new ideas; instead, Pins create a fun tribute to sounds that have gone before.

At her best, her pace is furious, and keeping up is exhilarating.

You just want them to cut loose, and they never do.

The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn is their third album, though, and if anything, it's a regression: CocoRosie seem to be intent on emphasising all that irritated in the first place.

[It] touches on everything great about classic, epic rock from the past 30 years.

It's not that R lacks imagination, but Sex in the Kitchen, Sex Weed and (Sex) Love Is What We Makin' ... suggest that he needs to sort out his libido if he's going to be remembered as anything other than a heavy-handed stud.

Things bounce around so much--from the Vegas piano-meet-Neil Young's Trans of Superstar to the dippy funk of the Jonathan Jeremiah-sung Good Riddance--that the overall feeling is close to that of an Aeroplane-curated Kitsune mixtape. By no means a bad thing, but hard to treasure as a whole.

The issue is that none of the songs that all this gorgeous production whirls around are actually any good.

Temper Temper is marred by cynicism and a lack of dirt under its nails.

It's a decent set, but one whose pulse remains steady throughout.

Tweet is a contender again.

In many ways, this Travis record is no better or worse than previous Travis records.

After the Rain certainly has flaws, but Leftwich has created a fragile, precious, oddly comforting thing.

Lyrically, Polite rarely strays far from a seducer's template, but the way in which he sells the cliche is compelling.

A Head Full of Dreams is frustratingly blighted by the sense that Coldplay haven’t fully committed to the album’s big idea: they keep deviating from the Stargate pop plan to knock out stuff like Amazing Day.

From the electro-punk opener Birthday onward, she's competent and entirely impersonal. But that's no impediment to enjoying the record, which darts efficiently from EDM to Bollywood to--Beliebers, look away now--sappiness inspired by her on-off boyfriend, Justin Bieber.

What it all amounts to is your standard Morrissey solo album: great songs cheek-by-jowl with songs that would once never have got past reception; brilliance alongside stuff that boggles the mind; not bad, but not built to reach far beyond his standard fanbase.

It’s an album that hints at greatness--such as World Pleasure, a seductive, serpentine thrill--but ultimately seems confused by its looming self-conciousness.

That carelessness [tendency towards repetition that seems lazy], combined with Sia’s mewling, monotonous and oddly Scandi-accented vocal, means Everyday Is Christmas is unlikely to win over any nonbelievers.

There are plenty of tracks on Reasonable Woman that are so broad, so simplistic that they feel like first drafts. .... Slightly more successful is the single Fame Won’t Love You. With a breathy feature from Paris Hilton, the track deals with the hollow rewards of celebrity; it skews sophomoric, but it’s certainly more interesting than the motivational posterisms elsewhere on the album.

The ironic thing is that he knows that a 16-track album of love songs for his wife is too much. As he puts it on Actions: “She don’t want it. She don’t need it.” Who, then, is it all for?

It lurches from one thing to the next, be that MOR balladry, glam rock or orchestral showtunes.

Overall it feels like a kind of gentrified pop: synthetic and nondescript, but predictably appealing all the same.

Musically it merges early Maximo Park and latterday We Are Scientists, and in the end evokes a feeling that's less I Predict a Riot, and more I Predict I'll Get Quite Annoyed and Shake My Fist At Tonight's Newsnight.

Quaint but rather lovely.

It's ultimately another product of New Order's comfortable middle age, in which the sound of their golden past gets dependably reproduced.

All Or Nothing has also been calibrated to appeal to R&B fans across the Atlantic, with little in Sean's keening, Akonish vocal to suggest that the singer was raised in Hounslow.

It’s a collection for those that want to remember the film, not the artist.

It’s neither better nor worse than Heartworms--which itself was very much a mixed bag--but the pleasures come in different places.

It’s horribly revealing of both men’s weaknesses. Eno’s contributions are witlessly unimaginative.

The screwed sprite-like vocal effects of Picture You and Darkness Visible’s indistinct dystopian miasma (soundtracking a reading from Paradise Lost!) suggest a new identity crisis.

The lyrics are uniformly awful.

Admittedly, the pair also cover weightier topics--the co-opting of hip-hop, music industry machinations and parenting dilemmas--but it’s all against a backdrop of basicness that continues to grate.

His take on rap’s current go-to themes of drug dependency, joyless sex and the double-edged sword of success feels stale and smug.

As for the other 13 songs, which he performs with a red-carpetful of A-list guests (Eminem, Kanye West, Christina Aguilera), they range from dour, generic pieces that can't conceal his listlessness to a few pretty good-ish party songs with sharp hooks and crackling beats. You can only hope he rediscovers his swagger.

Love is a truly notable lyricist, but she's an ideas person rather than a musician.

Much of the album is merely classy and respectful.

It's derivative, cliched and gives the impression of having been made by someone who's never danced in their life, but in a purely technical sense, it's extremely well produced, punchy, powerful, with a strong grasp of dynamics and occasional flashes of a deft melodic touch.