It all hangs together quite nicely if, as ever, rather uninvolvingly.

The writing is generic, the studio-craft impressive. Enjoyment will depend on how you get on with the voice and its hooting cannonade of mannerisms.

Every intro twinkles and every chorus swells effectively enough. But if indie carries on like this, we're gonna need a bigger landfill.

It's the sound of a deeply dim man backed by competent-but-conventional musicians.

It won’t frighten the horses, but it might encourage you to buy an overpriced T-shirt.

[A] bog-standard shamateur indie rock, with riffs borrowed from The Smiths and Velvets, lyrics borrowed from Dylan and Iggy.

He wins you over, eventually.

Collections constitutes a fairly sharp decline.

From dancehall/nu-metal hybrids to dubstep-meets-Bond theme balladry, its bombastic stuff, but also finely tuned in its balance of sincerity and showmanship.

A strange end to a strange album, whose mood, to invoke one of their earlier songs, is not so much "Fuck You, It's Over" as "fuck yeah, it's over!"

It's an hour of radio-friendly pop-rock in a Deacon Blue meets pre-ironic U2 vein, all over-reverbed vocals and mildly modish electronics.

It's bright and brash, sometimes almost life-affirming, but leaves you wondering two things (the influence of Graceland and singing in a comedy "foreign" accent).

Those who endured Williams’s recent X Factor performance need not fear: this brassy sequel to 2001’s big-band LP Swing When You’re Winning, is actually rather listenable.

It's much more fun than the Brandon Flowers album. Which, admittedly, isn't very big talk at all.

It's difficult to tell, though, how much is sock and how much darn.

Yes, it sounds like you imagine: slightly artificial, pop-inflected chunk-rock, with dustbin-lid drums, loads of guitars and even a hint of voice box/Auto Tune.

Given its sudden sharp downward turn, it’s hard to unreservedly recommend Another Country. But there are enough decent moments to justify a bit of iTunes cherry-picking, at least.

A charming companion piece to The Best of...

A rapid sugar rush, followed by a gradual crash.

Electra Heart is too professional to be truly terrible, but it's never clever enough to be more than merely toytown.

Boyle's versions are professionally executed but phenomenally dreary.

Its best moments are its electro-pop numbers.

Tuneful enough, his debut is an MOR bricolage of prevailing musical styles.

What’s inside? Nothing. Which is, coincidentally, what this album adds to the treasury of human art.

[Since I Saw You Last] falls below Barlow’s best--“Patience”, “Rule the World”--at just the point when he needed to up his game.

Marcus Mumford leaves his Irish-folk years behind and adopts a transatlantic burr for “The Wolf”, whose chugging riff and sappy lyrics (“You are all I’ve ever longed for”) pinpoint the album’s core failings: absences of both lateral intrigue and the elemental oomph its track-titles (“Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, indeed) hint at.

Evolution is a perfect Frankenstorm of over-produced American R&B.

Planta feels lightweight; not much really catches the ear or imagination.