Stellar*: Something Like Strangers

It's tempting, given Stellar*'s trademark asterisk, to say something smart about whether they've become a footnote themselves.

After all, it's been five years since their 2001 sophomore album Magic Line largely failed to match the capture-the-moment pop vibrancy and hits from their great 1999 debut Mix.

The background of Something Like Strangers - with Runga co-writing tracks with a few Los Angeles pop guns-for-hire - suggests a band low on creative inspiration as well as momentum. And what's here is really the makings of a Runga solo album.

Either way, it's an album that - while polished and often deeply catchy - just lacks conviction.

You can't help but admire the expert calculations apparent in those co-writes as they shift from hook to hook, but there's not much in the performances or arrangements here that lift much of the material out of the generic.

True, Runga's voice, a blunter, bolder instrument than her famous sister's, still shifts expertly and sweetly from come-hither purr to rock pout throughout.

But somewhere between a duff ballad or two (High), some 80s-styled synthrockers (Everybody with its shades of Berlin and Sparkle, a sort of U2-Eurythmics collision), and one single like bland Scottish outfit Texas (Whiplash), this album starts to feel decidedly lacklustre.

There are some entertaining diversions. Like when opener Beautiful, perhaps fearing it will be compared to the Garbage song of the same name, turns into Another One Bites the Dust.

Or when Take a Girl offers up blues guitar, glam-rock riffs and a Joan Jett-powered chorus.

Or when 7 Miles sings about being "seven miles high", which just shows you can't top those Byrds.

There are some fine tracks which deserve a spot on the inevitable best-of - among them For a While (a lovely duet with Breaks Co-op's Andy Lovegrove), Miracles (which hits similar spots to their early hit Part of Me), and Life (a slow sweet Bic-ish number making fine use of its Star Trek lyrical reference).

A mixed result, but the best of Something Like Strangers can't stop the rest of it sound like it's going through the motions.

Label: Sony BMG