Ian Brown

ROCK

As lovely as it is hearing Ian singing ‘Wish I could scoop all of those children in my arms and protect them all from harm’, it’s hardly the ex-Stone Roses man at his lyrical best. The much-worshipped simian northerner wanted his fifth solo album to be a politicised, soap boxing masterpiece, but musically it’s more of a tickle than a punch. Lush, sweeping orchestral arrangements don’t gel with his trademark flat rasp, and collaborations with sweet-voiced Sinead O’Connor on current single ‘Illegal Attacks’ about the Iraqi conflict sound more worthy than worthwhile.