Its best moments are its electro-pop numbers.

DeMent cuts through the sheen with a simplicity that reaches back through decades.

MFAD! finds them sounding like exactly what they are, namely an airbrushed, Massachusetts version of the Stones.

The Atlanta singer delivers soulful, socially conscious meditations.

This long-delayed third album sets out to make the Hackney diva "current" again.

Venturing further into radio-friendly pop-rock than ever before, her fourth album showcases a strong voice which (unlike brother Rufus) actually hits the notes.

The Origin of Love is an autotuned, multitracked meringue whose ingredients include 10cc and Buggles, and whose only weakness is the absence of a killer single.

Essential for fans, of course. It is left to the rest of us to look on from a safe distance with our hard hats on and to marvel at the most self-regarding singing voice in post-war popular music.

She makes a half-decent dance diva on "I Need Your Love", but I'd ask whether that doesn't defeat the object of being Ellie Goulding, though I still don't know what that object is.

The sound is gothically cavernous and frames her seized phrasing with tasteful restraint.

The results have a tendency to make you look at the ceiling.

This critic cannot in all honesty say, with a clear conscience, that their second album is absolutely terrible. Because it plain isn't.

There's an excess of bog-standard radio-friendly pop-rock, and a couple of wet weepies à la "Don't Speak".

Uno! starts promisingly, but it's soon obvious that the Clash of "Tommy Gun" is still their template.

The rest of Kiss is like opening a tweenager's diary (titles include "Tonight I'm Getting Over You") and setting it to synthy, house beats, but nothing has the crossover appeal of that debut single.

This is a production in search of an album, a massive empty shell, a big expensive nothing.

There's an undercurrent of sentimentalism running through Come of Age....But originality is hard to come by.

A chastened affair: instrumentally pared-back, vocally wan and full of unremarkable Brill-Building-meets-Belle-and-Sebastian ditties.

Sun is an album of polished electronic pop that mostly struggles to distinguish itself from the current slew of female singers.

Casual bystanders might wish for more memorable songs or some advancement of the form.

It's high-class karaoke, covering the Chi-Lites, Dorothy Moore, The Dells, Womack & Womack.

"Anastasis" is the Greek word for "resurrection", but stasis is closer to the truth.

[Four] sees them rediscovering guitars with a vengeance – and many tracks here come with the sort of epic quality that has helped Muse filled arenas.

The more you listen, the less the album reveals; her vocals fall between sultry and sterile, and you wish, to take two of her professed influences, that she was a little less Sade, and a little more Chaka Khan.

For all the virtuosity in his fingers, Jerry is no singer, and this collection of tasteful exhibits needs faces [guest singers]. The faces save the record.

It's two-thirds pretty good, all the same.

He wins you over, eventually.

Never, whose song titles are nearly all one word, isn't as daunting as the avant-garde approach might suggest.