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Bell Book and Candle- Read My Sign

Two stars

(Blackbird/Atlantic)

Though the words "German pop sensations" have never been a sure selling point in American music, Bell Book and Candle are doing their best to change that with their debut album, Read My Sign.

Released in Europe in 1998, the album received Gold certification in Germany, helped out by the Platinum-selling single "Rescue Me."

Singer Jana Gross had received no formal vocal training and had not performed in any other bands before she joined forces with husband Hendrik Roder and friend Andy Birr. She has a fine voice though, clear and agile, and with it she carries the band's songs, from the dregs of pop all the way up to mediocrity.

For the most part, the album's songs are unmistakably poppy, mid-tempo flights of acoustic guitars and adult-contemporary sounding drums. Many tracks feature dirty electric guitars coloring the songs before giving way to anthemic, ringing choruses.

In fact, with the cheesy sounding synthesizers, huge choruses, and Gross's impressive but unmistakably "white-girl" vocals, many of the tracks sound like out takes from a lost Alanis Morissette album.

Unfortunately, Gross's lyrics are no more insightful or compelling than Morissette's, mostly hackneyed pop clichˇs about love and freedom. "I can't get your name out of my brain," she sings on "Heyo," while on "See ya" she blandly asks some unnamed paramour to "Come into my heart/ can you feel my desperation deep inside/ come into my soul."

There's no Teutonic desperation or controlled rage here, just the almost-American musings of another talented but empty singer. Overall, the album seems undistinguished and boring - an uninspired band going through the motions of creation, but without actually coming up with anything new.