* Meredith Brooks

DECONSTRUCTION

(Capitol)

With its "inspirational" Queen Latifah cameo, Meredith Brooks's new single "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" venerates the mostly-white-chicks Lilith Fair as a watershed of racial harmony. Starry-eyed, no doubt, but that beats the prissy moralism of the other songs on Deconstruction, where Meredith declares she's had it up to here with our superficial society, henna tattoos (they're shallow!), and Monicagate (timely!). For Brooks, if it makes you happy, it's undoubtedly a crutch, and using "pop-psychology words" makes you a crystal-whipped "Cosmic Woo Woo." (Stale Clueless-isms like "Just get real" and "Let everybody deal," however, are A-okay. I kept waiting for her to say, "Talk to the hand.")

Brooks opened her 1997 debut, Blurring the Edges, rapping about black coffee and Todd Rundgren on the accomplished Sheryl Crow cop "I Need." But she's notorious for "Bitch," which phrased a perfume-commercial simplification of feminine complexity in a binary structure swiped from Alanis Morissette's far-superior "Ironic." Deconstruction rummages through the same totally '90s thrift-store jungle, echoing "Life Is a Highway" and Taylor Dayne (and, on "Shout," sacrilegiously biting the Breeders' "Cannonball" riff stock and barrel). Brooks's writing is a little bit Alanis (minus Morissette's liberating inability to edit her emotions) and a whole lot Sheryl (without the lyrical character development and hunger for solace). "Sin City" boldly (and lamely) rebukes Crow's "Leaving Las Vegas," admonishing, "You can never leave Sin City!" So by the time she gets to "Bored with Myself," you'll know exactly how she feels.

-- Alex Pappademas