Morning lie-ins, wistful contemplation, sunlight through windows, dissatisfaction, pastel colours, frustration, soft interiors, reflective solitude, warm breezes, and a sense of not being in love but stoically comfortable and hopeful of change. You could throw in, fruit'n' fibre and blue sky thinking, they wouldn't mind. From the sound of their debut album, Hieronymus are not about to get into a pillow fight about it, they don't do hysterical angst or drug-fuelled feedback.

It all stems from the voice: dulcet, low and reassuring. Singer / lyricist Katherine Hieronymus, originally from Athens, Georgia, but for the last decade an honorary Brit, sounds like a modern day Karen Carpenter, without the gushy kitsch, as she takes on the heartland of The Sundays, with `Clueless' and `Never', and the sassy poppiness of Shania Twain, in `Shy With Me' and `Star' ("I want to be a star in my own life / Don't want to be an extra in yours"). But `Alone In This Tree' is more than a necklace of smooth, well-rounded beads of airy songs. It's in the running order and studio production that the band go beyond convention . The splashes of electronica slinking throughout, like ghosts in the machine; the sample bursts of soprano opera in the remarkable `Tragic Truth' and film dialogue of Cary Grant from An Affair To Remember in the utterly infectious `Go Dry', all show a masterful touch. The album finishes on the triumphant note of `Burning Bridges', swathed in an 80's stadium rock drumbeat, last heard when John `The Voice' Farnham threw back his shoulders and marched into the sunset. Thankfully, they stop short of mixing bagpipes to it.

Add tales of disillusionment and alienation (`Dragonfly'); love as vehicular paranoia (`Afraid'), and straightforward self-questioning (`Talk Me Down'), and you end up with a very fine debut album, the sort you can wake up, or calm down, to, without tripping over any duff fillers. Life as one big sigh.

Paul Carrera