by Gary Susman

(Almo Sounds)

Oh no, not another one, you sigh. Another angry chick singer with classical training. I'm sure she hates the comparison, but it's hard not to refer to 20-year-old English pouter Imogen Heap as an Alanis Morissette-ette, given her rankled pose, Cousin Itt hairdo, and back-of-the-throat snarling vocals. (And on the piano-inflected tunes, she can't help evoking fellow redhead Tori Amos.) Aside from her anagrammatic album title, there's little verbal cleverness in the sub-Jewel versifying (she's especially attracted to the words "ugly," "torture," and "sleep") of someone whose limited life experience is apparent. Her songs dawdle (at four or five minutes each) like Saturday Night Live sketches that don't know when to quit.

And yet, and yet -- she's a genuinely gifted songwriter, a crafter of indelibly catchy melodies, passages of delightful weirdness (her seductive cackle on "Come Here Boy," the taunting and vengeful refrain of "Getting Scared," the funhouse-horror breakdown in the middle of "Rake It In"), and even moments of sublime inspiration (when the banal chorus of "Oh Me, Oh My" suddenly resolves into a searing plea: "God, are you there/Are you out there?"). Chops like these (and a shout that could cut glass) could someday have listeners comparing Alanis to Heap.