*** Catatonia

INTERNATIONAL VELVET

(Vapor/Warner Bros.)

The first thing you notice when you hear Welsh popsters Catatonia -- actually, it's impossible to avoid noticing -- is lead singer Cerys Matthews. Alternately flirtatious and strident, distinguished by a bad-girl nicotine rasp, Matthews's voice is an intoxicating amalgam of Björk, the Sundays' Harriet Wheeler, Marianne Faithfull, and Kim Wilde. She also rolls her r's in the most delectable way, a talent that's heard to best advantage on the chorus of "Road Rage."

Even such a voice as this wouldn't amount to much without suitable tunes to back it up, and Catatonia have got plenty. "Mulder and Scully," a huge recent British hit, with its cracks about hiring the X-Files crew to solve the mystery of why our heroine's sleeping alone, is something of a novelty number, but its sleek melody keeps you coming back. The tongue-in-cheek lyrics to "I Am the Mob" incorporate every Mafia cliché from horse heads between the sheets to sleeping with the fishes; coupled with a stadium-ready chorus it's positively gleeful. Tracks like "Why I Can't Stand One Night Stands" and "My Selfish Gene" are more subdued but no less engaging.

-- Mac Randall