Ophelia

05/19/1998 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Rob O'Connor

During the hippy-trippy days of late '60s psychedelia came a young lass with long straight brown hair who sat cross-legged with an acoustic guitar and sang songs about world peace and love with absolute sincerity. Her name was Melanie and that's exactly who Natalie Merchant sounds like on the second track ("Life Is Sweet") of her second solo album. Merchant's an odd one. Her decision to leave 10,000 Maniacs seemed strange, considering their bland backing perfectly matched her less-than-distinctive delivery and the instrumentation she's chosen since doesn't seem like much of a departure. For this album she's brought in a revolving door of musicians to assist the bedrock cast of ex-Joe Jackson stalwart Graham Maby on bass and Peter Yanowitz on drums and, again, the differences are minimal at best. "Kind And Generous" sounds like a less hooky version of last album's "Carnival." "Break Your Heart," the lite-FM ballad "Frozen Charlotte" (which recalls the Kiss ballad "Sure Know Something") and "King Of May," however, are all decent tunes that would sound great coming out of an expensive high-end stereo after a grueling day at the office for sure!