**1/2 Holly Cole

DARK DEAR HEART

(Metro Blue)

When Holly Cole debuted, in the early '90s, she was considered a jazz, or jazz-ish, singer, a smoky chanteuse with a slightly ironic interpretive style. But she's become progressively more pop with each release. And after having unwittingly demonstrated on her Tom Waits cover album, Temptation, that the greater part of Waits's brilliance lies in his delivery (and the lesser part in his lyrics), she has come to seem like yet another singer who can't quite recast borrowed material as her own.

Cole's current persona wavers between the kind of kittenish anomie favored by Gen X femme singers and the more nuanced ache of a jazz balladeer -- the two images best blended here on the cover of Lennon/McCartney's "I've Just Seen a Face," a sexy opener that makes the rest of the set decidedly post-climactic. There are times here when you might be willing to settle for her professionalism and attention to detail -- the occasional cushy guitar is well used -- but too often (and most egregiously on "I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn't Run") her inner Melissa Manchester emerges and she becomes just another pretty voice.

-- Richard C. Walls