Richard Ashcroft: Human Conditions

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * )

Listening to the former Verve frontman's second solo album, an incongruous name popped to mind: Nigel Planer.

That's as in Nigel Planer as Neil, the hippie of The Young Ones, and that ancient English sitcom where he was the ageing rock star hanging out in an English country manor, getting his head together. No, there's little physical resemblance between beanpole Ashcroft, but a, like, metaphysical one.

That's right from the first song, Check The Meaning, on which Ashcroft's second line is, "paranoia, the destroyer, comes knocking on my door" before the song slogs on for another eight minutes in which the chorus frequently asks, "Can you hear what I'm saying/Got my mind meditating on love".

How nice for him. But anyone who bought him as the space cadet frontman of the Verve, or even indulged his urges to be the new Neil Diamond on his solo debut, is really going to have to brace their attention span for this one.

Hey, it's got the legendary Brian Wilson on backing vocals on the closing track, Nature Is The Law. But that doesn't stop it sounding like a tree-hugging Nick Cave on yet another over-long soporific exercise in acoustic-framed, semi-symphonic, cosmically-addled self-important pop with not much in the way of a decent tune.

There is a brief outbreak of rock but Bright Lights is strangely innocuous and has Talvin Singh - who appears on most of the tracks - bashing away on his tablas throughout.

With titles such as God In The Numbers, Lord I've Been Trying and Man on a Mission, it seems like Ashcroft is contemplating the big questions. But you'd have to be a real Nigel to find any real meaning in it.

Label: Hut