The Lilac Time is being heralded as the Next Big Thing by the British rock press, but this band's not nearly as frightening as most winners of that prize. (Listened to any Sigue Sigue Sputnik records lately?) Led by former British teenybopper star Stephen Duffy (the record's evasive packaging doesn't name any band members), the Lilac Time is another new British group that sings ominous paeans to some idealized past, romanticizing "the day before the day before yesterday/When we thought everything would now go our way."

To be fair, the Lilac Time does so with a certain pop sense (after all, Duffy was a founding member of Duran Duran) on pastoral songs like "Return to Yesterday" and "You've Got to Love," tastefully deploying technical gimmickry to suggest simpler times and simpler sounds.

But constant looks backward, bad puns and precious, vague images quickly dishearten the listener. British and Irish performers as varied as Richard Thompson, Billy Bragg and Van Morrison can evoke past triumphs and disasters without catering to bland nostalgia. Duffy's wan voice is affecting, and his band's backing is for the most part smooth and supportive; the settings are pretty. But Lilac Time lacks content – it needs ideas that don't fall back on some distant, pastoral nirvana. (RS 547)

JIMMY GUTERMAN