Gossip: Music for Men

Three years ago, Gossip, an American punk trio, burst on to the scene with "a rip-roaring album, Standing In The Way Of Control", said David Bennun in the Mail on Sunday. What really made them stand out was the voice and presence of the "loud, gay, plus-sized" Beth Ditto. How disappointing, then, that their latest album, Music For Men, "is not so much punky and funky as clunky". The producer Rick Rubin has a lot to answer for: he has "brought a 1980s-style sterility to Gossip's former brash exuberance and made Ditto seem oddly muted".

I agree, said Mark Edwards in the Sunday Times. Rubin has "cleaned and polished the band's sound, only to reveal that there's not much substance beneath the outer layers of grungy attitude". Rather than "stadium-filling funk", all that's left behind is "some weedy – and almost entirely hook-bereft – disco". The only track of note is Heavy Cross, which, to say the least, is "a disappointing ratio". (Verdict: two stars out of five). ·