Even those already hip to the potent music of Britain's Waterboys will be surprised by the wildly impressive solo venture of the band's former piano player, Karl Wallinger. (Wasn't Mike Scott supposed to be the talented one?) Complete with a title and album cover that seem to suggest a Princely excursion into purple psychedelic revivalism, Private Revolution is in fact the very best sort of Sixties-meets-Eighties hybrid. The title track, for example, is a soulful midtempo number that's infectious enough to conjure up memories of vintage Sly and the Family Stone – quite a funky achievement for a young white guy formerly associated with the U2 school of anthem rock.

But Private Revolution is nothing if not varied – "Ship of Fools," the first of what ought to be many singles from this record, is a much more modern and moody confection, anchored by Wallinger's reedy, Jaggeresque vocal. Just as good is the eerie, romantic "All Come True" (among the things a woman makes "come true" in the song are the Renaissance, Buddy Holly, Sir Walter Raleigh, the BBC and, appropriately enough, the Sixties), which sketchily recounts an act of betrayal.

On the second side of Private Revolution, Wallinger bravely comes out of the closet as a devout Dylanophile with a clever homage called "The Ballad of the Little Man" ("He's sitting in the garden as the acid rain comes in/He's got a cupboard full of rhino heads/And boots of leopard's skin") and an extremely faithful cover of "All I Really Want to Do." And with the ecologically minded "World Party," Wallinger pulls off a melodic call for solidarity among all living things. It's the sort of hippie-drippy, even childish notion that would sink a lesser talent. But, as Private Revolution makes clear, Wallinger is anything but that. (RS 493)

DAVID WILD