Fastball Keep Your Wig On

About five years ago, Fastball's All the Pain Money Can Buy went platinum on the back of smash single The Way. Since then, Messrs Scalzo, Zuniga and Shuffield have had time to reflect on commercial success and the pressures of selling records. The Austin three-piece spent a while apart, writing with artists like Guy Clark and NRBQ's Al Anderson, before finally coming back together after the long break to put together this latest effort. What's evident here is a band of undoubted musicianship, song-writing skills, and technical expertise. Sadly, I'm also convinced that all their charms cannot hide the absence of the killer spark, and the sheer blandness of many of their tunes.

The warnings should have been clear from the outset, I suppose. Sheryl Crow collaborator, Jeff Trott, produces much of the fare on offer here, and Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne does the watchdogging on the rest of the album. At the same time, all the protestations about "relaxing" and "loosening up" seem a bit too much, suggesting a band who aren't managing to move too far from pop sensibilities. That said, Fastball are masters of a genre, like Crowded House or Huey Lewis before them. Shortwave, for example, is mellow Sunday afternoon barbecue rock. It's not a bad start, but Lou-ee, Lou-ee then proffers a musical quilt taking in Crash Test Dummies and the Barenaked Ladies. Oh yeah, be warned.

And if that's the musical horizon that we're scoping, lyrically we're also in a land of clichés; slightly screwball, the geeky lad lost in love, and any other familiar conceit you can think of, at its apogee (or nadir, depending how you see it) on Drifting Away. Then I Get High turns into, well, washed out Paul Weller, before a couple of numbers tread mid-period Sting. 'Till I Get It Right is a rather damp cod-ska effort, and Mercenary Girl, lyrically more interesting than the rest of the album, is no more that mild country 'n' western with the slightest of twists.

If there's a standout then it's Falling Upstairs, which wouldn't let down a Crowded House album. And I suppose that that's indicative of the project here, a marvellously tuneful, well-written, well-crafted and completely one-dimensional album. Soon, though, we're back to the horror horns and formulaic call-and-response of Red Light - perfect pop, a genre mastered, but with all the edges rounded off.

I'm pretty sure that this album has all the potential for another massive hit. They're good enough, solid enough, and write all the tunes to deserve it. But whether this sort of formulaic, middle-of-the-road pop is worth our while is another matter all together. Don't get me wrong, I love the middle of the road like I love Fleetwood Mac, but Fastball are a kind of musical populism, all things to all men. To paraphrase someone cleverer than me, their argument is completely irrefutable, but singularly unconvincing.