** Mojave 3

OUT OF TUNE

(Sire/4AD)

Although some in the overstatement-prone British press have heralded Mojave 3 songwriter Neil Halstead as one of England's very best, it'd be more fair to say he's still learning from the best. Formed from the splinters of Slowdive, a powerfully abstract post-My Bloody Valentine quartet whose excellent early '90s releases were lost stateside in the Ride/Swervedriver/Loop deluge, the country-rock-leaning Mojave 3 go a fair way toward reflecting the melancholy drift of an evening desert landscape, with soft-stroke acoustic guitars, pedal-steel whines, easy mid-tempo moods, and light B-3 organ washes. Halstead is an eager, perhaps too eager, student: his Nick Drake imitations on "Who Do You Love" and "All Your Tears" are on par with Tori Amos's stylistic pillage of Kate Bush, and when he's not joining the flooded ranks of neo-Dylan wanna-bes on "Some Kinda Angel," he's la-la-la-ing on the confusing "Give What You Take" like a zealous Seals & Croft devotee. Only on the stripped-down "Yer Feet," a bare-bones heartbreak song, does he really find his own voice, and the result is quite moving.

-- James Rotondi