*** Ian Brown

GOLDEN GREATS

(Interscope)

Ian Brown was once Brit-pop's golden, great hope. That was the late '80s, when he was fronting the influential Madchester hitmakers the Stone Roses. But the Roses fell prey to a tumultuous, stop-stop career and never delivered on the promise of their first album. (What with the band's colorful dalliances with drugs and lawsuits, their obnoxious, big-mouthy behavior, and Brown's jail time, you have the makings of a decent Nik Cohn novel.) In 1998 Brown released his solo debut -- Unfinished Monkey Business -- in Europe, but Golden Greats is his US debut, and it partly makes up for lost time.

Mostly the disc sticks to Roses-style dance rock, with the occasional funk groove and/or psychedelic/experimental edge, and the results are quite beautiful and inspired. Brown's vocals are as deadpan cool as ever, but even more distant than before, adding a fitting tone of stoner detachment to the ethereal, slow funk of "Set My Baby Free," though he sounds as if he'd partaken of one spliff too many on the throwaway "Love like a Fountain." Elsewhere, he recounts his theory of evolution in "Dolphins Were Monkeys," exclaiming with little enthusiasm, "Feel excited, throw your hands into the air." Which may just be another way of admitting that so much time has passed since his last stand that even Brown can't generate any great enthusiasm for this long-overdue comeback.

-- Linda Laban