The reinventions just aren’t brave enough.

Other than the sultry Stars Dance, much of this sounds like songs Rihanna rejected.

As ever, the messages are mixed, on many levels.

These songs are all surface, with only the odd hook to snag us.

Throughout, there’s a wearying feel of vanilla indie designed by committee, with barely an original idea between its 10 tracks of chirpy inconsequence.

The tunes that could only come from Williams make this record entertaining if a little groan-worthy.

Though the anthemic Coming Home could have been penned for Voice viewers, hits are unlikely.

The puerile misogyny is unfortunate (Drop a Bag ends by shaming women who post suggestive photos on social media), but this is largely a straightforward collection of bold, egotistical hip-hop tunes.

Sadly, three minutes of mild excitement are no compensation for the 59 of tedium.

At its best, New Eyes is proof that you can get away with pretty much anything as long as you're clever about it. Even in its more ordinary moments, it's still a classical gas.

There are some more adventurous diversions, including a guest spot from Kendrick Lamar.

The result is an awkward shouldering of styles and personas in search of one that fits.

His 17th album doesn't deviate wildly from the blueprint.

The songwriting isn't sturdy enough to hold it all up.

There are appealing acoustic and woodwind moments--Yellow Lights, Aubade--but the thumping orchestral pieces verge on overkill and the dystopic descriptions of burning barrels seem hysterical at a time of rocketing renewables. Compared to Bellowhead, it’s a damp squib.

La Liberacion is better in its quieter moments.

Equals tilts heavily into contentment and maturity, including an obligatory lullaby – Sandman – for his little one. Nice Ed gains the upper hand, with a commensurate loss in musical interest.

The success of Lips Are Movin’ confirms that she’s no Eamon-style one-hit wonder; but Trainor might do well to study Duffy’s fate.

Newman chews his way through these 11 songs with abandon; you can almost hear him trying to do the splits in gold trousers on the bigger numbers.

Some of these tunes are passable party pabulum but Thicke is such a total tool that it gets in the way of any fun.

His debut is anodyne if ruthlessly efficient. A touch more chaos would not have gone amiss.

Younger Now isn’t a failure exactly--just the sound of Cyrus, or her record company, panicking and hitting “reset.”

Odell has shown his promise but he has yet to prove his range.

At first it seems she’s bounced back undaunted: galvanising opener Never Really Over thrums with fizzing electro synths; Daisies pushes back against detractors with brio. Yet there’s a creeping lethargy, a sense that, at 35 and about to become a mother, Perry’s kitschy shtick of old doesn’t quite fit any more, but that she hasn’t found a way forward she can connect with.

Its repertoire of tricks--piano and falsetto sob-rock, yodel-along backing vocals, hands-in-the-air breakdowns--is entirely predictable, but generally redeemed by strong, surging melodies.

Foster may not be the subtlest lyricist ever to decry the excesses of western society, but his songwriting has filled out and, on the evidence of several tracks here, including Best Friend, he still knows how to craft a solid hook.

Choruses range from slushy ("Oh you will never know how much I love you so") to barren ("This is all you ever asked for, this is all you'll get"), but sometimes there's a shard of sincere sentiment.

There is a very good reason this has sat in a vault for 23 years: it fails to capture Buckley’s magic as well as the Live at Sin-é EP, which would be his debut release later in 1993.