Patricia Kaas: Piano Bar

(Herald rating: * * )

She thought up the title herself, perhaps?

The smooth and anodyne production puts this vocally alluring French singer against a selection which includes such cotton wool classics as If You Go Away, What Now My Love and Yesterday When I Was Young and a number of seductive-sounding French-language songs.

Kaas, very popular in France, says the idea behind this collection is to restore the term "piano bar" which has been a vehicle for traditional chanson — although with varying sized line-ups, keyboard programming and a string section it's a concert hall-sized room and the 60s and 70s song selection is maybe more like that found in a hotel lobby than a bar.

Beautifully realised, but hard to get excited about and often quite unmemorable.

Label: Sony