Counting Crows: Hard Candy

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * )

The cover here is like an old candy box with the slogan "13 fresh new flavours". I wish. The Californian band's return is a collection of almost generic Crows-sounding pop-rock, with singer Adam Duritz still wearing that battered-by-love heart on his sleeve. The band lock in on a series of songs which are familiar melodically and have obvious emotions and hooks the size of shark gaff. Nothing much wrong with that really — unless you think a band on its fourth album should stretch itself more — and there are some pleasant folk-rocking things here, notably the neatly ambivalent paean to American Girls (with Sheryl umm ... Crow), the salute to the Band's Richard Manuel in If I Could Give All My Love and the Bacharach-styled ballad Butterfly in Reverse.

Up All Night (Frankie Miller Goes to Hollywood) is a grin-inducing title, New Frontier rediscovers squirrelling 80s keyboards, and Miami is their Big Statement. It's a good stopgap if you are hanging out for another Wallflowers album and, although over the full span Duritz's voice grates as it does the obvious emoting, this is a sound if unspectacular collection.

Label: Geffen