It's a well-made, well-polished piece of material. But she ruins it by painting a wacky overcoat over something that was probably fine in the first place.

While Relapse is a slightly more energised record than the listless "Encore" (despite a Dr Dre production that is, for the most part, tired and dated), it's hardly the comeback many hoped for.

Back On My B.S. is 50 minutes of largely no-nonsense Busta, fist firmly planted in the mid-'90s. Of course, with that we get the expected ups and downs, but what Busta lacks in album length longevity, he makes up for in force.

Bloated, culturally inconsequential and decidedly average, the net result is a band getting far too high on an over-inflated sense of self-importance to the deafening chimes of cash registers the world over.

It's not just that 'Love Sex Magic' is the highlight, it's Fantasy Ride's only saving grace.

With their abilities to self-censure and decide at what's fundamentally good gone seriously awry, the results are more likely to induce a rolling of eyeballs and suppressed sniggers rather than gasps of admiration.

Much of the album bathes radio-friendly funk-rock in a kind of Balearic after-glow--it conjures that feeling of bittersweet triumph many will have felt as last night becomes this morning, the conquering of a dark that is now needed if sleep and recovery from such an act is to be possible.

Robbed of any arch qualities they might previously have hinted at, Art Brut are shown up as cuddly pop-comedians happy to tell the same joke over and over, devoid of any real insight and normal to the extent that you half-expect Argos to launch into a diatribe against aeroplane food.

This may be a much welcomed return for Lady Sovereign from the wilderness, but in the case of Jigsaw, it would seem that she's missing a few pieces to make this comeback a complete success.

All told, it's a rag-tag collection, and one that comes short of the band's high standards even allowing for the commercial backlash.

R.O.O.T.S. is so crushingly flat that it should waft between the cracks unnoticed.

Hooks hit their fleshy mark here and there--'Dead End' is a compulsive, '80s-flavoured high and 'High On The Heels'' clipped acid house proves endearingly gauche--but it's cold comfort on a record that fleshes out a promising template to only diminishing returns.

It would be unfair to dismiss the record completely, however, as there are definite highlights.

The feeling remains though that their broad emotional strokes will have to concede something to intimacy and solitude to ever really win hearts.

MSTRKRFT make a racket that's impressive at first but eventually the echoes of it return to bite them.

As is so often the case though all it takes is a fall to flush away fanciful tendencies and with All The Plans they revisit wholesale what it was that made them a draw in the first place (other than sounding a bit like Coldplay).

They seem afraid to risk a good old-fashioned jungle break-out, the likes of which would be genuinely invigorating.

For the lovers, this patchy album offering moderate advance on its immediate predecessors will probably suffice. But in truth it's an unmitigated failure to reconcile the sound of their past with a cohesive vision of their future.

Much of It's Not Me's bummed-out vibes seem rooted in sound artistic sense, but musically a sunken-eyed pallor has replaced the rosy-cheeked flush and, you know what, it all gets a bit...draggy.

As a collection of songs it tentatively experiments with genres and musical devices so as to appear less of the poor man's B-sides of its predecessor; but at the same time daren't stray too far from the blueprint that made the quartet such a loveable bunch of rogues in the first place.

Too often you can hear the self-satisfied smirk on these songs, the little finger held out affectedly at right angles, the raised eyebrow as he plays to his adoring audience.

There could be a better band in there than the production lets them be.

His records are not without merit and the better songs here more than deserve to find sizable audiences. But there's no sign that music is going to ever be anything more than an enjoyable sideline for a man whose greatest art continues to be created in other mediums.

His flow remains arguably one of the greatest out there; it would just be nice for him to have a bit more faith in his own mind, rather than those of our uber-producers.

Meandering atmospheric intros and outros, with lyrics that often just repeat the same verse ad nauseum, overshadow what could be, at times, shorter, snappier songs.

It's more a rescinded lesson in demographics, with disc one seemingly aimed at airbrushing out the last vestiges of Knowles' credibility in favour of a procession of lame pop ballads in a Shakira or even Shania Twain-ish mould.

For the most part, however, this is an ultra-sugary album which leaves a strangely sour aftertaste - not a flavour the public seems too fond of.

Sprawled over 13 tracks, The Cure have attempted a microcosm of their oeuvre in one volume and despite their lofty ambitions, the results are a decidedly mixed bag at best.