Yes, he sounds and often thinks like his father. That's probably what accounts for Julian Lennon's label push and radio exposure. What's ironic is that Valotte, the debut album of a familiar sort of singer/songwriter, is exciting and irritating in just the ways debut records used to be – back in the days when raw talent was more frequently let through without being lawyered, A&Red and...

Julian Lennon's new album, 'Mr. Jordan,' is the one he needed to make to keep from being pegged as the Frank Sinatra Jr. of the Nineties. After his limp 1986 album The Secret Value of Daydreaming, many rushed to dismiss Lennon as a witless amateur whose success proved only the enduring powers of nostalgia and nepotism. Daydreaming was so consistently flaccid that it all but erased memories of...

Somewhere along the way, Julian Lennon grew up. Help Yourself exhibits plenty of the charm of his previous work but little of its callow inconsistency. Instead, there's a surprising level of sophistication, reminiscent of David Bowie in some places and Lennon's late father in others. If you can divine clues from album titles, this one is particularly intriguing: Whereas John Lennon issued a cry...

The secret value of daydreaming is that it permits you to explore your imagination at little cost in the way of consequence or action. At least, that's the conclusion that can be drawn from Julian Lennon's first two LPs – 1984's Valotte and the newly released The Secret Value of Daydreaming.

The records differ in ways worth mentioning. Valotte was like a mental movie filmed in the mind of the...