CDs

(Virgin)

2/5

A distressingly unremarkable solo album from America's least sweet sweetheart. Lyrically, it's as bitter and self-absorbed as you would expect, but it's all set to floppy, fairly bloodless rock that leaves Love sounding as adventurous as the prospect of eating with chopsticks. Almost Golden is no more bilious than Sheryl Crow could manage if someone stole her snakeskin trousers, and Uncool is no more

stirringly sorrowful than Chris Martin could muster on a black day. All The Drugs is as good as it

gets, and even that's a straightforward mesh of tight melody, anthemic punk and woe-is-me cliche that singularly fails to engage with the listener. If Love really wants some attention, maybe she should stop seeking it in such a dreary and obvious manner, or at least go and help Linda Perry write for Pink.

Abigail Wild

Michelle

The Meaning of Love

(BMG)

1/5

It was predictable, but it's still disappointing. Michelle McManus will never cavort to an uptempo, cutting-edge R&B joint, this we know. But did they really have to market her

as sub-Steve-Wright's-Love-Songs fodder for the middle market?

Even on the cover of the CD she has the earnest gaze and innocuous styling of an easy-listening artist twice her age. Suffice to say, much of this sounds like soft-rock balladry performed to a karaoke backing tape, so it is at least honest to sell it on the back of her No 1 single, All This Time.

No-one's doubting that Michelle can hit the notes, but she just can't sing soulfully (starkly demonstrated on her cover of Feelin' Good). Combined with tinny production and synths imported direct from the 1980s, this is a thoroughly boring, unambitious debut.

Beth Pearson

Norah Jones

Feels Like Home

(Blue Note)

2/5

Norah Jones's inconceivably popular debut, 2003's

Come Away With Me,

was so omnipresent,

it's unlikely you'll have to seek out this follow-up.

It will find you.

This is not necessarily

a bad thing if you enjoyed her debut but wished

she'd included more country influences.

Sunrise, for instance, features a bassline that plods along like an

old nag across the

desert, accompanied

by a somnolent vocal

from Norah. In The Morning has a boldly repetitive guitar

arrangement, but it's confused by a bluesier piano part.

It's such a catalogue of twee country lyricism, vocals and music that Norah's promising duet with Dolly Parton, Creepin' In, eventually becomes a parody of the rest of the album: chummy, samey, sedative.

Beth Pearson

Einsturzende Neubauten

Perpetuum Mobile

(Mute)

3/5

This is surely the quietest album ever released by this reformed bunch of mad German metal-bashers. Subtle, soft, if a little menacing, Blixa Bargeld and his band made their name (Collapsing New Buildings in English) with records of relentless metallic violence and pained Teutonic angst. Maybe it's because Blixa and his chums are getting on a bit, but this is a less abrasive experience all round, sounding more

like compatriots Can

than their own furious past.

The best song on this involving album is the

great title track, which propels itself along for

more than 13 minutes

on a lithe groove that

subtly shifts nuance

and focus as it progresses. Elsewhere there is

blurred, tense electro-pop and detailed percussive explorations, but

hardly any trace of

the destructive anger

of before. This is an interesting grower of a record from grizzled, pensive veterans of the genuine avant garde.

Phil Miller