Jill Sobule may have sparked a minor sexual revolution in 1995 when "I Kissed a Girl" (off her eponymous second album) got teenagers across the country singing along to a tune about Sapphic love. As Alanis Morissette cornered the Angry Young Woman market, Sobule concealed the most subversive of fantasies within the sweetest of pop signatures.

Two years later, Happy Town finds Sobule stalled in a no woman's land between mainstream appeal and her creative muse. Nowhere is this more clumsily apparent than on the opening track, "Bitter," on which Sobule fumbles with a trip-hop mix as she sings about her refusal to join the gravy train "with the other jealous bitches." Sobule strives for bold provocation but manages only to come across as glib and reductive. Similarly, the title track falters when its attempt at pop pastiche winds up sounding like the very Prozac Nation pablum it feigns to critique.

Sobule's best moments come on her spare, slower numbers, which reveal a singer/songwriter whose lyric and instrumental palette has grown richer with time. "Half a Heart" shimmers with jazzy horns and vocal phrasings; "Sold My Soul" beautifully juxtaposes Sobule's ruminative strumming against the contrapuntal twang of Al Perkins' pedal steel guitar. On the country-infused "Love Is Never Equal" (featuring guest musician Steve Earle), Sobule lets her hair down and shows her roots as she adopts the husky drawl of a world-weary chanteuse.

If 1995's Jill Sobule was one woman's witty coming-out manifesto, Happy Town is an awkward coming-of-age tale set in a darker, post-post-feminist world – frequently uneven and grappling with its changing voice but still full of promise. (RS 759)

NEVA CHONIN