Lipslide (Instinct)

When the other members of British cult pop sensation Saint Etienne took a little break to launch their own record label, their lead singer built on her songwriting experience with the band and worked her vocal magic, giving the world of pop her first solo album, Lipslide. An expedition into a world of '60s girl pop mixed with some electronic production, Sarah Cracknell's dreamy vocals grow and grow on you until you're forced to surrender to the album's subtle yet straightforward sound.

Her publicist praises her work as "classic timeless pop," and those who are already fans of Cracknell's work with Saint Etienne would probably agree. Everything that shone about her vocal work for that band is even more obvious on her own album. Charmingly subdued and perfectly mellow at times, her voice calms and soothes you into a pop-induced bliss. Is Lipslide really "pop precision," as the press release would have you believe? There's nothing precise about it; you might even complain that all the tracks blend too much together, leaving you with nothing but pop amnesia. But Lipslide's soothing and undeniably cool style and Sarah's sweet but edgy voice are terribly hard to complain about. B+ -Patty Li

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Mest

Wasting Time (Warner)

Punk-ska lives! Although their sound was threatened with being lost in the doom, gloom and anger of alternative-rock, the Chicago band Mest scored a summer hit with "What's the Dillio?" However, the catchiness of the song also brought about a significant backlash, as the mantra of "What's the Dillio?" constantly spilling from the radio made the band seem inane and ultimately very lame.

However, surprisingly, on their debut album, Wasting Time, Mest's derivitative punk-ska style works. Their music, despite a cookie-cutter resemblance to other punk-ska outfits such as Blink 182, still shares the same exuberance of a life preoccupied with drinking and chasing after girls. Thus, the quartet plays quick but ultimately very melodic songs about longing ("Richard Marxism"), about more longing ("Random Arrival") and finally about more longing, with a dash of self-destruction thrown in for good measure ("Lonely Days"). The album's best track, the title track, also deals with the theme of love and loneliness. But what makes the album fun and catchy is that this longing could very well be for a multitude of women found in one summer day on a beach. The playful guitar-laced ballads leave the listener with a smile and a jig in the step. And ultimately, that is what Mest wants to accomplish and does so with aplomb: mixing punk, ska and reggae with some interesting production values from John Feldmann (of Goldfinger fame) to make music fun again. B+ -Jimmy Zha