Ben Lee: Awake is the New Sleep

Herald rating * * *

Aussie Ben Lee has been plugging away for nearly a decade since signing up for solo singer-songwriterdom after the demise of his briefly internationally feted teenage band Noise Addict.

This is his fourth album under his own name, and the first since becoming actress' Claire Danes ex, an event which may have inspired his many frank contemplations of love and loss among the 14 tracks, especially Apple Candy and Ache For You, and Close I've Come - Although Lee also thanks "everybody at the American Taoist Healing Centre for teaching me 'nothing' - what it is and how to get there".

There's still a attractive lack of guile to Lee's popsmithery, whether's he's wondering why he's not on the radio with the Beyonces or Good Charlottes of the world on Catch My Disease or sounding like a party-pill generation Paul Kelly on opener Whatever It Is.

But the muted delivery of the songs - which range from finger-picked guitars for the ballads to mid-tempo pop-rockers - doesn't add much energy to the material. And when on the penultimate track Light it warps into a 10-minute noise jam, it sounds like Lee and mates have got bored with his own musical niceness.

Label: Border/Inertia