"Lord, you know wits, they come three to the pound," Lloyd Cole sighed on last year's Rattlesnakes. What distinguished that album from the rest of the U.K.'s neo-literary postgrad brigade was the Highway 61 Revisited-era whimsy that mediated Cole's bohemian vignettes and the Commotions' gift for plain, insinuating hooks. For their second album, the Scottish quintet is matched with producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, whose 3-D textures have animated tracks by Madness and Elvis Costello. It's tempting to dismiss this sluggish follow-up as the result of bad chemistry, but the album's faults have less to do with studio gentrification than with the familiar sophomore shortage of good songs.

The sardonicism that levels the anguished edges of Cole's portraiture gives the characters in "Brand New Friend" and "Grace" enough perspective to mock their own misery. The same is true of the droll "Why I Love Country Music," which contains not a lick of pedal steel guitar. But for an ironist, Cole spills an unfortunate amount of ink pursuing the kind of earnestness best left to Dan Fogelberg. The predatory villain in "Pretty Gone" is a contrived punching bag, and the teary sympathy of "James" will appeal only to those for whom "It's a thoughtless heartless world" comes as a revelation.

Eventually, with so many feigned smiles hiding hollow hearts, the scenarios of Easy Pieces blur together. You can hear Cole grasping on "Grace," a prayerful song about premature aging, which recycles the gimmick of "Patience" (from Rattlesnakes); on "Rich" he inserts a Beatles lyric for the second time in as many LPs. Even when Cole offers a tart quip on "Lost Weekend" ("I wrote for you a love song in tattoo upon my palm/'Twas stolen from me when Jesus took my hand"), its resonance is dulled because it's His third walk-on in the album.

The title of the record is both patronizing and smug; this, the band chuckles, is our notion of pop music, and isn't it smart? The sharp side of their irony glints right back at them; Easy Pieces is neither as challenging or as listenable as Rattlesnakes. Langer and Winstanley don't seem to contribute much – horns on "Rich," a dynamic arrangement on "Brand New Friend" and enough strings to mute guitarist Neil Clark, the band's best melodic weapon. Despite Cole's ambitions, the album's best song is the stark, understated "Cut Me Down," which could give even Richard Thompson the chills. But mediocre albums with one great song come three to the pound. (RS 469)

ROB TANNENBAUM