Music new releases

Published on Friday 8 November 2002 00:00

ROCK & POP

Phil Collins: Testify *

East West 13.99

WHY do it, Phil? Why release another album of the same old somnambulant tripe? You don’t need the money; you could just retire from studio work, tour every so often to satiate your fans, maybe conduct the odd drumming masterclass for kicks - you’d have more time with the wife and baby, everybody would be happy. But apparently the world needs another Phil Collins album - including a single Can’t Stop Loving You, ponced off Leo Sayer for Pete’s sake - to stick on in the background as some variation from the sound of a dripping tap, or the distant hum of a neighbour’s lawnmower.

Testify (ah, the evangelical promise of that title) is an hour of spiritless MOR with some vaguely "ethnic" backing tracks, Celtic "vibes" and background choir chanting as embellishing touches which can most positively be described as "not Phil Collins’s voice". For all the impact it makes, he could just have re-released his last album with an alternative cover and title.

ballboy: A Guide For The Daylight Hours ***

SL Records 13.99

THIS album is pleasant, erudite and charming listening. And if that sounds like a euphemism for "twee indie music made by schoolteachers", that’s because it is. ballboy are an Edinburgh quartet who make like a starry-eyed Arab Strap with better song titles (I Lost You, But I Found Country Music, anyone?) and liberal use of strings. Where the Strap breed an atmosphere of claustrophobic regret, ballboy offer childlike aspirations, self-deprecating wit and flimsy tunes - even their effort to whip up an indie ruckus on Nobody Really Knows Anything is slight. This second album is accompanied by a booklet of primitive cartoons and playful sleeve art by David Shrigley which will elicit a temporary wry smile, just like the music.

Westlife: Unbreakable - The Greatest Hits Vol.1 *

RCA 13.99

AND so the barefaced Christmas gambits begin. Check Westlife with their ten Number Ones - the early ones you were shielded from before they colonised the pop market, the Mariah Carey one, the faux Celtic one, the Comic Relief one and the deplorable attempts to pull off upbeat material, all are present and incorrect. The sales incentive here comes from a batch of new songs tagged on at the end, where "new" means "same old, same old". Tonight sounds like it has escaped from a Bryan Adams album, only to be captured and emasculated by these emotion-sucking zombies, while Loves Takes Two is their usual turgid ballad served up in an overblown R&B style which is not even palatable when done by the experts R Kelly and Boys II Men.

And Sir Cliff’s magnificent Miss You Nights presents so much of a challenge that they can barely lift their eyes to give one of their stock imploring puppy dog looks.

But by far the most worrying thing about this album is that it is only Vol.1. Their work is not yet done - more innocent souls will be extinguished by this nonsense.

R&B

TLC: 3D ***

Arista 13.99

FOLLOWING the death of Lisa Lopes, the L of TLC, in a car crash earlier this year, the future of the most assured girl group of the last decade is up in the air.

Surviving members Tionne Watkins and Rozanda Thomas have finished the album they were working on when Lopes was killed. Although there is nothing to match the inspired pop of Waterfalls or No Scrubs, 3D is packed with hooks and character, including the spiky sound and attitude of Quickie and the energetic, skittery funk of Dirty Dirty (a Timbaland/Missy Elliott production, surprise, surprise) and Hey Hey Hey Hey.

New single Girl Talk sounds a little contrived, however. TLC had already firmly established their girl gang credentials, so there should be no need to go down the obvious "liberated ladeez" route.

But the fluent, touching soul pop of Turntable, a tribute to Lopes, is leagues ahead of their gushy collaboration on the Missy album. If this is TLC’s epitaph, it is a worthy finale.