A mostly thin and needlessly morose album. [Jun 2002, p.108]

While the debut was full of witty, Sparksy songs, Yes, Virginia is awash with mawkishly earnest ballads that suggest Tori Amos after a spell at drama school. [May 2006, p.104]

Overall, however, the reaction is a resounding "Huh?" [May 2011, p.103]

Much of it is a coffee-table approximation of the producer duo's more irreverent work. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Without notable emotional heft, however, the identikit cool and sub-Lana Del Rey poses prove wearisome, the cloying artifice insubstantial. [May 2017, p.39]

Modish but strangely clinical. [Aug 2004, p.94]

Arcade Fire producer Craig Silvey and a slick session band sculpt an impressively spacey sound, but LaVere's self-conscious, bored voice strangles everything at birth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

It's a sweet-natured and seemingly uncynical exercise which, while pretty enough, brings nothing new to these well-worn ditties. [Jan 2012, p.101]

Snoop's patter soon descends into G-funk pastiche and cretinous misogyny. [Feb 2007, p.85]

All totally fine, of course, but next time a little passion and personality won't go amiss. [Jan 2012, p.103]

Their profoundly boring ninth album resembles sketches toward another unnecessary Stone Roses comeback. [May 2016, p.71]

Jackrabbit is two songs and three interludes of grandiose, tuneless narrative better suited to Broadway. [May 2015, p.80]

There are flashes of sublimity, but too often hideous flashbacks of Jethro Tull and ELO. [Jul 2004, p.102]

He can't muster much more than a compose-by-numbers Boards Of Canada kit that's destined for little more than wildlife documentary syndication. [Mar 2005, p.102]

Tries hard to add a few hues absent from Matchbox 20's colourless rock. [Jul 2005, p.90]

The dreary emotional content and the sub-MBV soundscapes set out to gaze enigmatically at their shoes. Sadly, they don't get past the navel. [dec 2008, p.115]

Al Jourgensen is bringing Ministry to a close, and truthfully, it's the right time. [Nov 2007, p.113]

It's occasionally very beautiful, but this is so far removed from values of immediacy and accessibility that Stevens' core audience are likely to be left non-plussed. [Dec 2009, p. 113]

You're left wondering quite what point she's trying to make. [Nov 2004, p.122]

Sadly, though, nothing on The Ting Tings debut album quite lives up to that promise [of 'That's Not My Name']. [June 2008, p.94]

The album is reliant on the Scene's female associates--like Lisa Lobsinger on the lovely Moroderish cosmic disco of "All To All"--to bring character to whtat remain some pretty hazy jams. [Jun 2010, p.83]

20 Y.O. is a lazy timewarp, not a retro treat. [Dec 2006, p.114]

Where MIA escapes the club and returns to the wider world, there's an overwhelming sense of diminishing returns. [Aug 2010, p.89]

Elsewhere, sluggish excursions in ambient pop and a commitment to melancholia that borders on the opppressive suggests that all those years grasping at the advertising dollar have left a taint of bland that won't scrub off. [Aug 2009, p.96]

Will Ozanne comes across as a milder version of James Blake. [Mar 2012, p.84]

Their 2002 debut was a surprising success, but Haunted Cities struggles to repeat the trick. [Sep 2005, p.100]

White is undoubtedly talented, but neither she nor her record company seem to know what to do with her. [July 2008, p.100]

Foul-mouthed, egocentric rhymes and nondescript beats. [Jun 2003, p.91]