Morcheeba came to us two years ago with an inventive, emotive,

downtempo

debut album called Who Can You Trust? Full of wacky titles

such as

"Moog Island," "Trigger Hippie" and "Tape Loop," it placed the

band inside

the velvet ropes of the lounge revival while simultaneously

cresting on the

first wave of trip-hop. Two years is a long time in music, though.

Back

then, the group's two-boys-and-a-girl lineup was almost as

unusual as its

sound; only Portishead were obviously mining the same territory.

Come 1998

and it feels as though we're awash in this genre. What with Olive,

Lamb,

Mono, Morcheeba and many more who don't get the breaks, the

female-fronted

trip-hop act has become an easy one to follow and a much

tougher one to

break through with.

To the extent that Morcheeba recognize any of this, the trio

appears

determined with its second album, Big Calm, to place the

emphasis on

the songs themselves and let the pundits work out what camp they

or their

music belongs in. There are certainly some of those downtempo,

electronic-based rhythms that provoked the term "trip-hop" to

begin with,

but there are also some roots reggae, some retrospective

loungecore and a

large number of lush ballads that are far more suitable candidates

for

adult-alternative radio than they ever would be for the dance floor.

As such, cynics might call Big Calm a coffee-table album --

the type

that yuppies keep around for dinner parties. Optimists will instead

point

to the quality of the songs themselves, the meticulous nature of the

arrangements, the velvet cloak that Skye Edwards wraps her voice

in, the

earnest lyrics of Paul Godfrey and the excellent musicianship of

his

brother Ross. For a band as young as Morcheeba -- Skye, the

eldest, is a

26-year-old mother of two, Paul is a wordly-wise 21 -- Big

Calm is

frightfully mature. What makes it even more shocking is that these

songs

were already written by the time Who Can You Trust? was

released.

With another couple of albums-worth apparently already

stockpiled, you can

understand why the group is being tipped so strongly for bigger

things.

Big Calm opens with a touch of bass, a flurry of soft strings,

a

wave of lounge guitar and one of the oldest metaphors in the book

-- Skye

Edwards picturing herself leaving her soul "down by the sea."

Thereafter,

the sound of "The Sea" is oft-repeated on Big Calm. "Part of

the

Process" and "Blindfold" are each similarly slow, but with majestic,

melodic detours; "Over and Over" is almost pure folk; and "Fear

and Love"

is so gorgeously melancholy that it brazenly lifts the string melody

from

R.E.M.'s "Find The River" without apology. Lyrically, too,

Morcheeba's

obsessions with the pains of everyday life are similar to those of

peak-period R.E.M. The lines "Fear can stop you loving, love can

stop your

fear" would have sounded right at home on Automatic for the

People.

It's beautiful -- well, certainly pretty -- stuff, but it would strain the

younger listener's patience if that's all there was. Fortunately,

Morcheeba

break up the ballads with blasts of ultra-hip noise. "Shoulder

Holster" is

a harsh piece of blazing, dancefloor trip-hop; "Let Me See" stars a

spy-flick guitar line over equally crushing beats; "Bullet Proof"

kicks off

with the kind of swirling synth sounds that introduce many a great

dance

track before bringing in live drums and a Hammond organ to

confuse the

issue; "Friction" is the sort of pure reggae that many Londoners

take for

granted but rarely imitate; "Diggin' a Watery Grave" sounds like

Ravi

Shankar and Dick Dale co-scripting a David

Lynch film; the title track, "Big Calm," unapologetically mixes the

band's

standard slow groove with wailing guitar solos and a rap by

Spikey T of

Bomb The Bass; and finally, "The Music That We Hear" could

easily have been

pilfered from -- or lent to -- Mono's recent, highly-acclaimed debut.

Confused? You're probably meant to be. In interviews, Morcheeba

make it

clear that they find this songwriting business ridiculously easy; if

you

take them at their word, the songs on this album were essentially

written

by the brothers in one vodka- and amphetamine-fueled night. The

sole

occupants of their own South London studio (a classy one too,

judging by

the finished production), Morcheeba clearly enjoy trying their

hands at

whatever sounds come to mind. It's the right attitude in the modern

world,

where genres exist only to be broken down, and if at times Big

Calm

sounds like one enormous grab-bag, then the argument that there

is

something here for everybody (at least everybody who likes slow

tunes, that

is) has never been more applicable.