**1/2 Sophie B. Hawkins

TIMBRE

(Columbia)

Hawkins's third album visits several musical genres, always comfortably, sometimes enticingly. But as on her first two CDs, few of the new songs here suggest a distinct personality or sustain a signature style. In "Mmmm My Best Friend" and "Lose Your Way" she sounds urban folkie, like Sheryl Crow. "Bare the Weight of Me" finds her playing piano and singing about conflicting emotions in both soprano and contralto registers, just like Tori Amos. Hawkins plays the cello, too (though you might not notice it), in "I Walk Alone," a Europop song of married love and wifely loneliness. Some numbers simply lack melodic shape: "Strange Thing," "32 Lines." Still, it's hard not to applaud Hawkins for the four best songs on Timbre: the storyteller's delight "Help Me Breathe"; the musically-dreamy-in-the-best-Europop-manner "No Connections," with its sultry lyrics; the sharply worded "Your Tongue like the Sun in My Mouth"; and "The Darkest Childe," a funky but horrific look at the terrors that bedevil the souls of goth fans, and the overwritten music they cling to.

-- Michael Freedberg