You might remember Ian Broudie as the lead singer of the Lightning Seeds, the band whose lightweight but catchy indie tunes proved to be tailor-made for the triumphal days of Britpop. Since then, the publicity-shy Scouser has kept up his cool quotient by producing such hip Liverpool outfits as The Coral and The Zutons. His debut solo album strips the instrumentation right back and brings his voice to the fore - which, given how thin and fragile it often sounds, was probably not a good idea. The rather hungover mood of the songs, meanwhile, has a depressing effect that will tax the patience of many listeners. The saving grace is his uncanny gift for an original melody - there's at least five here that'll be roaming around your head for days after you've first heard them. Whether Broudie's personality is strong enough to actually make you care about his emotional torment, however, is another matter entirely.
