Elsewhere: Post-death releases an inevitable event in life

By GRAHAM REID

The problem with music released after an artist's death is that sentiment tends to overwhelm any cooler assessment of the work in hand. When Elvis died, his mediocre single Way Down was suddenly propelled to the top of the charts. And only a Lennon devotee could argue that his Double Fantasy album was worthy of its number one slot in late 1980. Being shot doubtless had something to do with it.

And so we come to Brainwashed, the posthumous album by George Harrison. Without being cruel, the world was hardly demanding it and George himself was in no great rush, either. His previous album was in '87 - Cloud Nine which was pretty good - and his few musical contributions in the past decade and a half were a couple of modest Traveling Wilbury albums, those two embarrassing Threetles' singles and an appearance on a Jools Holland album.

Dead Lennon had more stuff released in the same period. So did Ringo.

But the inevitable in life - death - can be a great prompt to tidy things up. After being diagnosed with cancer in '97, Harrison started to polish some songs which had been languishing in his studio, some for many years.

Let's be honest: Harrison is an acquired taste. His voice is thin and reedy and doesn't have much range, and the music of his post-Beatles' career owed little to either their pop-smarts or ambitious Pepper-period work.

After his groundbreaking All Things Must Past triple-vinyl, released after the Beatles broke up, his songs were wordy, often clumsy and slightly finger-wagging. Sales suffered accordingly throughout the 70s and 80s, although he still sprung a surprising number of hits: Give Me Love, Dark Horse, Crackerbox Palace, Got My Mind Set on You and others all made it to radio.

His spiritual beliefs were often to the fore lyrically, yet occasionally - as on Blow Away which Enya ripped off for Orinoco Flow - his music has a lightness of touch, a breezy and elevating quality.

Brainwashed comes with the usual Harrison drawbacks: wordiness and weediness. There's no late-in-life "new direction", in other words.

As always with posthumous albums, some lines make you gulp: "I was almost a statistic inside a doctor's case".

But for the few tracks which sound like the Rutles-doing-Wilburys (Rising Sun is almost hilariously funny in that regard, except it's serious) there are songs of genuine charm and yes, even beauty.

Sentiment needn't be a factor when faced with the sincere Never Get Over You, Stuck Inside a Cloud and the Indo-fusion instrumental Marwa Blues.. Wilburys' fans will enjoy the lazy Rocking Chair in Hawaii, and as he often did he goes back to his childhood for an oldie, this time Harold Arlen's Devil and the Deep Blue Sea with Holland on piano.

Brainwashed is consistent with Harrison's solo career after the mid-70s: earnest and aspirational, unassuming and modest, slightly school teacherish, and woven together by Indian philosophy and that slide guitar sound which was his aural fingerprint.

No surprises from George, then. No big deal. But no more, either.