Seven years on from Satan's Circus, Death in Vegas' prime mover Richard Fearless doesn't seem to have moved on at all.

There’s much to be said for music as a private, sublime refuge, but Holy Wave rarely hit those heights. They evoke only the mild, gauzy dislocation of dawdling in the midday sun.

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott’s third album as a duo is disappointing, with Heaton’s lack of musical intrigue leaving some of his poorest songs badly exposed.

I Am Not a Dog has its moments, but they are brief and virtually lost amid the more experimental forays.

Another dilettante excursion with little to recommend it. [The Independent scored this a 2/5 in the actual printed edition not 5/5 as seen on its online edition]

He just sounds like a grumpy geriatric for whom age has brought little of the reflective wisdom of Leonard Cohen.

24/7 Rock Star Shit has to be one of the all-time great rock’n’roll titles; but sadly, lurking behind it is an album which struggles to fulfil such vagabond promise. Rather, it seems terminally enervated: most of these songs have a shrugging, slovenly manner.

While there's some interesting moments to be found here, for the most part Centipede Hz is a fatiguing experience.

It’s all fine: shiny and efficient pop, smelling of body oil and new car upholstery. But Payne treats each track like a rental car. He gives each song a spin and hands the keys back like a good lad without leaving a trace.

David Longstreth’s account of his separation from former bandmate Amber Coffman told through a welter of autotuned, over-treated vocals and jumble of clashing sounds that, to be generous, may be intended as an analogue of the ground shifting beneath their disintegrating relationship.

It's full of timid electropop anthems.

[TWGMTR] is pitifully thin stuff, with far too many nostalgic hankerings.

If Scenic Drive sets out to be an easy-listening accompaniment to a late-night ride, it’s successful. But if you’re looking for something with more clarity and oomph, your car horn may be the better option.

This debut album proper fails to develop or change-up his formula of predatory sexuality expressed in tremulous tones.

For while there’s no denying that Low In High School is more musically exploratory than usual, drawing from glam rock, electropop, tango and Tropicalismo, the singer himself has rarely exhibited such a grating combination of spite and self-pity. ... The album’s lengthy centrepiece “I Bury The Living”, an odious slab of trundling guitar bombast, lambasts as “just honour-mad cannon-fodder” the work of soldiers whom he presumes are too stupid to understand the wars they’re involved in.

Andrew Hozier-Byrne’s second album Wasteland, Baby! is still stuck mid-sermon, albeit emaciated from surviving solely on stale communion wafers.

Many of these songs are hip hop-lite, incorporating bland trap beats as Levine delivers lyrics in the kind of stutter pioneered by early Soundcloud rappers.

Listening to The Heavy Entertainment Show is a bit like watching EastEnders--a constant barrage of snarling, strutting chippiness passed off as authentic British geezerism.

There's precious little of the experimentation or variety you might expect.

Her dance-pop here is identical to everyone else’s, which leaves Perry clutching at the single-entendre raciness of “Bon Appetit” (“Got me spread like a buffet / Bon appetit, boy”) and curdled imagery like “my love’s the bullet with your name on it” to secure a soupcon of bogus outrage.

Horan is impossible to dislike, forever existing on the right side of cheesy, but the result is a record almost entirely stuck on safe mode. You can only hope its stronger moments hint at better things to come.

The homegrown characteristics of her distinctive style have been all but washed away in a flood of R&B clichés on All of Me, a routine blend of fidgety grooves and tiresome ruminations on life and love.

Williams veers all too often from the kind of whimsy and cheese that’s acceptable at Christmastime, to a level of saccharine that actually makes your teeth hurt.

They've certainly lost much of their vocal character to the dreaded auto-tune, without gaining much by recompense.

There are glosses on former glories--“Jamaica Moon” is a patois adaptation of “Havana Moon”, while “Lady B. Goode” involves gender-realignment of Chuck’s signature song--but they’re vastly outweighed by tranches of sloppy filler.

Away from his favourite theme, Wiley struggles to bring interest or insight to his workaday observations, and while many of his grimey "eskibeat" grooves have an infectious, spartan quality about them, it's likely that in future they'll be more profitably employed behind other wordsmiths.

It just feels tedious and predictable. Portentous twangs of guitar? Tick. Shivery percussion? Tick. Screeches of feedback? Tick. A frontman who delivers lyrics (rambling prose) in a croaky, squawking gasp that recalls Mark E Smith? Tick.

Originally recorded on a home four-track machine, the songs were subsequently re-done with Trevor Horn at the helm, which has applied a little polish to what still sound like under-written sketches rather than compelling pop material.

Simulation Theory seems to fall into two territories--songs are either half-hearted nods to the best of their heavier rock-opera back catalogue, or futuristic, electronic pop-heavy tracks that borrow from bands more adept at that particular sound, and the vast majority of which are burdened with Bellamy’s political paranoia. For a new listener, it’s baffling. For a former, diehard fan, it’s disappointing.

Essentially, this is yet another album of formulaic EDM pop and Latino R&B dancefloor grinders, more market tester than art.

Latest Record Project Volume 1 might be a grievance-heavy sprawl, but if you’re a Morrison die-hard it’ll be a worthy, timely addition to his catalogue.

While Fridmann (best known for his work with Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips) weaves his usual psychedelic magic, the accentuation of purely sonic elements--glitchy loops, textural effects, the miasmic tone--is at the expense of Finn’s core songwriting strengths.

The main problem is that overall, the aptly-titled By Default just lacks excitement and panache.

Only occasionally does the survey of this interpersonal battlefield afford an optimistic light.

The raw indie-punk grinds and krautrock pulses have a brutish drive and determination, though lingering this long among a cast of "wasted people in a wasted world" leaves a grim aftertaste.

Sadly, this is about as deep as their politics go on Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, the more articulate sentiments of To the 5 Boroughs having been largely abandoned in favour of fairly standard bring-the-noise, boast'n'diss hip-hop pablum.

This collection of re-recorded hits and newer material lacks both that album's imaginative approach and its understated nobility.

There’s a frustrating disjunction between intention and execution on Green Day’s Revolution Radio.

The Editors here step backwards into the crepuscular netherworld of Eighties new wave from whence they took their original inspiration.

Friendly Fires' follow-up to their Mercury-nominated debut is a huge disappointment.

Wig Out at Jagbags finds him reverting to type, with willfully obtuse sonic strategies that strive to wrong-foot even the most devoted listener.

Having spent so long exploring the intensely personal, she struggles here to find the right tone for more public matters.

“I Never Learn” is a gorgeous opener, its fulsome strum of acoustic guitars graced by strings and backing-vocal cooings in anthemic manner; but from there it’s emotional pain writ large, with wan piano lines supplanted by grand, melodramatic resolutions.

His tendency to hurl the same emotional intensity into every syllable (loud, soft, high, low, new idea or repetition) gets wearing. It doesn’t help that the melodies are often simplistic to the point of forgettable and the production seldom leaves a space unfilled.

Her winning formula back in 2010 was blunt honesty delivered in the form of spoken-word style poetry. Back then, she doled out witty, tongue-in-cheek observations and wry take-downs with ease. Attempts to recapture this style are marred by lazy rhymes and a delivery that’s often more just her speaking over the track.

Virtually every piece is too leisurely extended beyond its natural span.

They may talk it up as a brave new step forward, but their first album in over eight years can't really be viewed as other than a retrograde move for Jane's Addiction.

Kylie’s Christmas is wearyingly hard going at times.

With songs about mountain men and sentient country houses, it’s like a more pompous (and crucially) humourless version of The Incredible String Band built around flutes, celesta and caterwauling: okay in very small doses, but unbearable at album length.

Judging by The Light Of The Sun, she's expending precious little energy on songwriting and recording, allowing her natural inclination to extemporise far too free a rein.

Certified Lover Boy’s greatest crime is just how bland and boring it is. There’s very little here that Drake has not done better or more emphatically elsewhere; his album is deprived of any kind of experimentation or insight. He rose to the top baring his soul. Now it feels like there’s no soul to bare.

Overall, the weaknesses far outnumber the strengths. Not, of course, that that will prevent huge sales figures for 4: because those numbers, ultimately, are what it's all about.

It’s not completely without merit--some of the backing tracks have a mesmerisingly entropic grip, as well they might, with 14 writer/producers involved in a single track--but the overall effect is utterly wearying, and unpersuasive: after all, only fools waste pity on the wealthy.

For the most part, though, Blood Red Roses’ vaguely anthemic ditties are as adrift as his sailor, with nothing much beneath the surface.

Meg Baird, formerly the frontperson of Philadelphia-based psychedelic folk-rockers Espers, is left a little exposed on her own solo album.

It's a sound with all flesh stripped off the bone, but Lynch himself sounds like an intellectual playing bogus trailer-trash.

Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.

Green's delivery is too Estuary-Eminem, scattershot hip-hop asperity snarled out with a mockney menace that is too secondhand to be effective.

They’re still sculpted from the same small portfolio of sounds--basically, buzzing distorted guitar riffs and harmony chants borne along on pummelling drum barrages--which tends to impose too narrow an emotional range on the album. It’s like being hectored loudly by a bore.

The bawled slur that passes for Doherty's vocals is less agreeable the older he gets, while the flaccid grunge plaints and raggedy punk thrashes have diminishing appeal.

It’s no surprise, but still no less disappointing, that with all of West’s last-minute meddling of the album’s mixes the record lacks cohesion. Jesus is King feels more like a collection of well-produced skits than a full studio album, and fans will no doubt be wondering whether all the hype and stress that preceded its unveiling was worth it.

This third album sounds exhausted, worn out rather than careworn.

The found-sounds quickly become irritating--as too, unfortunately, does Wastberg’s wan falsetto, which imposes a mood of victimhood where uplift might be more appropriate. It’s rather sad, because there’s genuine invention in some of his J Dilla-style arrangement assemblages.

Olympus Sleeping feels dated, and a little forgettable.

Midnight Memories finds One Direction fumbling the transition with clumsy attempts to adopt ill-fitting rock livery.

Pure & Simple sticks for the most part to an agreeable neo-traditional approach.

Routine would-be anthems like “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way” and the assonant pairing of “You’re The Best Thing About Me” and “Get Out Of Your Own Way” simply piggyback on tired old modes, reflecting their former glories in the way that modern glass-box buildings simply serve as mirrors for the more dynamic and beautiful architecture of previous eras.

It's mainly brusque and strident raunch-rock, with an unappealing cajoling tone that virtually dares you not to find the songs clever and the hooks contagious.

Clearly, these New York math-rockers have yet to learn the values of de- cluttering, with most of these dozen pieces involving furious industry to no great advantage.

Glam, anthemic and messy Father of All… may be, but “inspired” and “baddest” it is not.

As the album proceeds, it frays apart as Neil’s gaze shifts to bombs and babies in the plodding anthem “Children Of Destiny”, and to Mexican fairground fantasy in the ludicrous cod-Santana-style “Carnival”. Despite similarly sluggish, slouchy manner, young backing band Promise Of The Real fall some way short of the full Crazy Horse, trudging rather than imposing a sense of implacable destiny.

It might have been hoped that the album itself were more impressive.

You’re bound to find yourself dancing to it at some point over the summer. It’s safe. Still polished. Nothing special.

It shifts desultorily from style to style, with songs barely hanging around long enough to state their case.

It's business as usual, but with diminishing returns, on I'm With You--the result, perhaps, of sticking with the producer Rick Rubin for six albums.

The album arguably gets worse as he gets better, particularly in “Quicksand”, with its Coldplay-esque promise to “patch you up, we’ll work it out”.

Behind the whippy synth flourishes and propulsive stompbeats that snag one's interest, the lazy charmlessness of the duo's rhyming quickly grows tiresome, a situation unalleviated by the occasional appearance of a Busta Rhymes or Calvin Harris. Fun in extremely small doses.

The songs rely on cringeworthy conceits like “Red, White & You” or rote expressions like “Sweet Louisiana”, while the refurbishing of the domestic abuse anthem “Janie’s Got A Gun” just tips it further over into queasy melodrama.

On Spirit, Depeche Mode get serious and political, which doesn’t really suit them.

It’s all a bit depressing, and not helped by the plodding music, which sags back into plonking piano quadruplets and dissatisfying, baggy sax, leavened by the occasional squall of guitar.

Some of the riffs are winners, but it's just not enough to carry the album.

It's all typically hard work to decipher, both lyrically and musically, but unlike Yorke's earlier endeavours with Radiohead, this time I'm rather less convinced that it's going to be worth the effort. It's certainly less fun.

Always exquisitely unbothered, the indie-rock poster boy now sounds like he can’t be bothered.

It's 16 years since Mariah Carey's first Christmas album, and there's nothing here to suggest she's developed significantly since then.

Speech Debelle shows some welcome signs of maturity on this follow-up.

The three-year gap between albums will ensure this tops next week's album chart, but it's a drab, unrewarding experience.

In places, it's a disastrously over-egged pudding.

For all his personable self-deprecation, the blend of operatic pop on which his reputation is built seems strangely thin and insipid.

Meat Loaf's latest, which covers much the same territory [as The Wall] but without any depth or desire to understand.

The dominant mode throughout is tepid bluegrass, heating up a little for “Phoebe.”

It’s mildly funny and philosophically intriguing. Little else is in this team-up of exhausted pop forces.

The Jayhawks release their most insipid, uninspired album in years.

Too many of these tracks are slight ideas and punning phrasework over-egged into grotesque wedding-cakes by Dudley’s billowing strings, leaving Fry stranded in the position summarised in “Brighter Than The Sun”: “I’m a man out of time/Looking for a mountain to climb”.

Throughout, the sound is brittle and strident, like space-rock-candy, with Deborah Harry's allure buried far too deeply in the crowded mix to be particularly effective.

The comforting simplicities peddled in tracks like “Reunion” and “Knockout” offer the rock equivalent of Donald Trump, currying favour without getting too specific.

Whether it's the involvement of Coldplay's Guy Berryman in the production, or simply their shift to a major label, on You & I The Pierces have lost much of what made 2007's Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge so beguiling.

The record’s sprawling R&B slow jams are more likely to inspire snoozing than shagging. Weighing in at a bloated 18 tracks, it’s got the soggy dead weight and wonky springs of a fly-tipped mattress.

MS MR deal in a similar kind of blandly alienated, metrosexual pop to Hurts, with Lizzy Plapinger's sultry-soulful vocals allied to Max Hershenow's electronic pop arrangements.