o matter how you mix the eggs, the butter and the flour, you're going to get yellow cake. Put the eggs in first, the butter in last, or in whatever order imaginable ? it's still yellow cake.

British pop-rockers Starsailor have yet to learn this rule of thumb, as they demonstrate in Silence Is Easy how to write 11 different songs with the same recipe.

Over the course of the band's two full-length albums ? including their 2002 debut Love Is Here ? lead singer James Walsh proves ten times over he can write many a majestic melody. To their credit, Starsailor know very well how to create a dazzling, velvet-textured timbre in their studio productions, built on a prescription of resonating drumbeats, pulsating basslines and twinkling keys, embellished with a satin-like orchestral arrangement ? all over which Walsh's emotive vocals soar.

But as brilliant as the sound is, it remains too consistent throughout Silence , leaving the listener almost bored halfway through, craving more to feast their ears on beyond the album's second song. Experienced together as 11 consecutive tracks, the result is too formulaic and fails to capitalize on the band's greatest asset ? Walsh's powerful and singular set of vocal pipes. Save the cello solo breakdown in ?Born Again,' the tracks vary little, both in form and content, from the recipe on which they are built.

Even the work of legendary producer Phil Spector on ?Silence Is Easy' and ?White Doves' didn't work any wonders, perhaps even contributing to the monolith of sound that pervades the album. The intricate layers are certainly there, but they're either so overproduced or so embedded in the ?wall of sound' that it's cumbersome to distinguish the elements.

Giving credit where credit is due, however, the album definitely has its moments, most often in the magnificent melodies Walsh delivers, reminiscent of the Manic Street Preachers. The tunes that stand out include the title track ?Silence is Easy,' a true gem of a tune, whose vocal lines inspire hope and promise against a backdrop of the band's more characteristic gloom. ?Shark Food,' which comprises two droning verses sung on repeat, creates the dark and haunting aura that dominated Silence's predecessor, Love is Here. Perhaps the most aggressive and memorable song on the album is ?Four To The Floor,' a grand production that feels like a bomb waiting to implode. The penultimate ?Born Again' is a refreshing track from the rest of the album, pared down and opened with Walsh and his acoustic guitar.

In all, listening to Starsailor's two albums back to back, you don't get a sense the band has grown up all that much, particularly when you learn that Silence is supposed to reflect a more mature band that has finally ?found itself? and its place in the world.

For one, Walsh's lyrics more than once exhibit a lack of depth and nuance . Instead of an evolution in lyrical adeptness compared with Love is Here , Walsh delivers some lines that made me wince at their unabashed literalness: ? My restless heart beats like a wanton drum/Tear me apart/Say I'm your only one ,? ?Some of us laugh/Some of us cry/Some of us smoke/Some of us lie/It's just the way we cope with our lives,? and ? This is my head/You're in my world/and there's no one but you, girl. ?

But the lackluster lyrics are belied in other lines from Walsh, whose uncanny resemblance to American actor Joaquin Phoenix still befuddles me. Singing, ? But for the Grace of God/she cried herself to sleep/Because the grace of God is something we can't keep ,? Walsh shows he is clearly capable of writing the lines he should be singing.