Splendid
Have You Got A Name For It
(Mammoth)

It's strangely pleasing when a title accurately describes the contents.  This album is a splendid bit of dreamy songsmithing. It's also the first post-Frente album from vocalist Angie Hart, who is these days paired musically and romantically with former Alanis Morissette guitarist Jesse Tobias (and if you need proof of the latter, just check the CD cover where they sport tattoos of each other's first names). 

While she may have swapped guitarists, don't look for any Alanis-angst guitar shredding here; this album could easily have come out as Frente III, if that band hadn't imploded after a sophomore slump. 

Front and center are Hart's delicate, waifishly vulnerable vocals and behind her Tobias generally strums strong but quietly moving chord changes leaving Hart's charisma to work its magic.

And it does.

The album seems to be structured as a song cycle detailing the breakup ripples from Hart's on-again off-again romantic liaison with Frente guitarist Simon Austin and her finding of a new  soulmate in Tobias. 

 In the opener, "I'm No Better," she blames herself as well as her ex for the end of a love — "I'm no better, I know," she admits over a lightly crunchy base of guitars and background rhythm loops. 

Then in "Less Than Zero" she cries "I don't want to play this game no more/if this is a love I'm fighting for/and if it was than why would you let me feel so less than zero?" with subdued background vocals and a gloriously melancholy ascendant chorus.

On "Better Things" she weaves the closest thing to a power anthem here with a pointed goodbye to a lover singing "I've got better things to do/better things to do than make your bed/ I wash my hands...nothing left to cry I've got bigger things to lie about than you/take my word for example/I've got better things to do."

At mid-album, things change from love-lost to love-found. "Hello  Dear" has upbeat chiming guitars and "Living" is a delicately circular love song of being overcome by love ("spinning, spinning, spinning/like a bird with one wing"). 

There's one cover song — a new track by Parthenon Huxley, "Come Clean" — about confessing one's indiscretions, and also a couple of gorgeously gentle ballads in "Beat of Your Blood" and "You and Me."

Have You Got A Name For It closes with a hidden bonus track  — the album's most rockin' moment — a Go-Go's-esque song telling the story behind the couple's exchange of tattoos.("got a new tattoo/ it's got your name/I'm in love with you/and you're to blame/if you love me too/you'd do the same...I've got you under my skin" )

Splendid's debut is like those lover's tattoos — just a couple listens and this one will be under your skin too.
 

If you've got a comment or question about this column or music in general, e-mail John Everson at jjenet@aol.com. If you'd like to hear Everson read select  Pop Stops reviews, click on the Pop Stops link in the Music section of www.audiohighway.com. And check out the Pop  Stops archive of print reviews at  http://members.aol.com/jjenet/reviews.htm

Courtesy of The Star Newspapers