They cite Wagner as an influence, sharing his bombast but none of the drama. [Apr 2012, p.69]

A stylistic and conceptual vacuum. [Jan 2016, p.78]

An in-joke gone horribly wrong. [Jan 2013, p.80]

Mancunian hipsters will shudder in disbelief. [July 2002, p.101]

An over-produced set of soppy ballads, Eagles-styled soft-rock and cod-disco. Sadly, the once great voice is shot, too. [Dec 2016, p.28]

Finds her plumbing new depths of pomposity. [Aug 2006, p.84]

An unctuous solo album mixing flaccid new songs with slick retreads of classics. [Jan 2018, p.24]

Where Flying Lotus scatterbrain brings emotive grooves out of madness, GLK can only manage ugly, mostly boring sketches. [Nov 2012, p.75]

From the Top of Willamette Mountain sounds more confident than the UK debut he released earlier this year.

A dozen songs of unremitting blandness by a man with absolutely nothing left to say. [Oct 2005, p.96]

Toxicity is virtually unlistenable: thrash metal splintered into a million pieces by unnecessary time changes, topped off with excruciatingly theatrical vocals. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Moffat doesn't do much with Mendelssohn's music except to chop it into annoying loops or stretch it out into quivering ambience that lacks the warmth and charm of his previous cut-up efforts. [Jun 2017, p.33]

It hard to work out what's more annoying from the rest, be it Dustin Payseur's forgot-my-gym-kit vocals, the self-important but frankly juvenile ambient interludes, otr the neat riffs, which sound like plugins from some indie-pop iPad composition app. [May 2013, p.67]

Starts badly and gets worse for a very long time (77 minutes). [Jan 2002, p.146]

"Heaven" is a decent stab at '80s synth pop; "Looking Hot" and "Push And Shove" mix bubblegum R&B with ragga-inspired middle eights; the rest is rather forgettable. [Dec 2012, p.75]

It might work as visual theatre, but as an album, it's horribly relentless. [Jun 2016, p.71]

No range of light here, just a wan glow that denies the need for shade. [Apr 2014, p.71]

Much of it is endurance-defyingly dull. [Jul 2006, p.84]

It was the anger and angst of a jilted 20-year-old that gave the original songs their edge--something entirely absent from these blandly matured acoustic versions. [Aug 2005, p.90]

A dreary debut. [Feb 2006, p.74]

Much of this flaccid digi-guitar funk sounds like rough ideas Daft Punk rejected for Discovery. [Jun 2002, p.122]

Perhaps the most inappropriately-titled album since The Best Of Sting. [Dec 2003, p.116]

Chiefly consists of lumpen and joyless AOR rock, with a few rhythm loops to give an illusion of modernity. [Apr 2002, p.104]

Their ragtag religious signifiers, stretching from the Mediterranean to Bengal, feel like gap year blog entries, and Cisneros' wizened sage delivery is ludicrous. [Aug 2012, p.77]

What makes B&S great is conspicuous by its absence.... For completists only. [Jul 2002, p.101]

Maximalists and circus ringmasters might enjoy it, but many will be scrabbling for the stop button. [May 2012, p67]

The problem with The Weirdness is that it shoots its bolt immediately and has nothing left to offer. [Apr 2007, p.93]

He still sounds like a blue-collar phoney trying to be a poor man's Springsteen. [May 2002, p.104]