Cibo Matto - Stereo Type A

(Warner Bros)

**

Review: Russell Baillie

Ditto most of the above for fellow Big Apple-dwellers Cibo Matto, the Japanese-American duo of Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, who won the affection of many on 1996 debut Viva La Woman! (and Honda won the affection of one Sean Lennon, who helps out here on various instruments).

Here, however, their charm factor and particular brand of pop irony is sorely tested on a jumble of an album. It can't conjure up much of the food-obsessed debut's charm across its 14 tracks.

Some is appealing, like the electropop opener Working for Vacation, the Janet-Jackson-gone-goofy Lint of Love, the Latin pop swish of Flowers and Sci-Fi Wasabi, a sort of hip-hop/heavy metal Godzilla of a song.

But much of the rest swings between the dull and the trying, whether it's the occasional futuristic ditty, occasional airy (and fairy) slices of Latin-flecked lounge-pop and its worrisome attempts to do something psychedelic towards the end. A second course of peculiar taste but no real flavour.