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.