Pretty much agree with every word of the initial post of this thread.
I always enjoyed Mark Prindle's reviews, though, but just because I think he's an entertaining writer in general, and of course it helps that he didn't take his reviews too seriously.
Other than that, there have been some magazine-employed record reviewers who have been closer to what I ideally want from reviews. Downbeat (the jazz magazine) had some good reviewers, and so did Option (a magazine that focused on more "outside" music, including avant garde/experimental stuff).
All I really want from reviews is a more or less factual description of the music (and who is playing on it, etc.) along with some similarity comparisons. That's all I need to know to tell me if something is worth picking up for me. I couldn't care less about the reviewer's opinion usually, and I definitely don't want them to talk about lyrics, or the artist's personal life or politics, or the record's broader cultural or historical context, or use the review as an outlet for their frustrated creative writing ambitions, or anything like that . . . which, given how folks typically write reviews, is another way of saying that in my opinion, most reviewers have sucked.
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