Any artist who releases six albums in five years risks overloading their particular market, and while Susan Boyle has always hit the Top 10 in the UK, only her first three records made it to No 1. Hope is her third "mixed" selection of songs (as opposed to her two Christmas albums and the one lifted purely from stage musicals) and, lacking any original material, it only marks time rather than searching out new territory.

The album swithers between songs you would hear regularly on a karaoke night (Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Impossible Dream, Imagine) and others with a religious theme (Abide With Me, Oh Happy Day, I Can Only Imagine). Like her cover of Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence on 2011's Someone To Watch Over Me, it throws a curveball with the inclusion of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, arguably the best track in the current set.

There is nothing surprising about the arrangements, however. The secular songs begin quietly with voice and piano before a steady and repetitive orchestral build; the religious songs share a similar choral backing and revivalistic tone; the running order leaps abruptly from the concert hall to the church nave and back again. Only on the final track - You Raise Me Up - do the two distinct styles happily combine.