Album: James Morrison, Songs for You, Truths for Me (Polydor)

James Morrison wrote more than 70 songs before settling on the dozen that comprise this follow-up to the two million-selling Undiscovered – on the grounds, apparently, that these are the most personal.

If so, he's to be pitied, the bulk of them being constructed from anodyne phrases that serve as shorthand for real experience and actual emotion. Most of the time, Songs For You consists of tired clichés – things hit him like a hurricane, the grass is greener etc – that long since held any truth or authenticity. Which, to be honest, is a match for the colourless "soul" arrangements which surround his husky inflections. Save for a few isolated touches – the cello and acoustic guitar with which "Love Is Hard" closes the album, the electric piano vamping through "Nothing Ever Hurt Like You" – it just sounds bogus, a simulacrum of soul. Nelly Furtado is wheeled in to over-emote on "Broken Strings", presumably to make Morrison bearable, while the motif of "Please Don't Stop the Rain" suggests he's channelling Chris Martin. But it's all so laboured and half-hearted: on the borderline-stalker song "If You Don't Wanna Love Me", he takes an age to convey what Screamin' Jay Hawkins manages in one line "I don't care if you don't want me, I'm yours", but with none of the wit or believability.

Pick of the album:'Love Is Hard', 'Nothing Ever Hurt Like You'

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