The Streets: Everything Is Borrowed

With 2006's The Hardest Way To Make An Easy

Living,

The Streets' Mike Skinner committed one of music's most unpardonable sins:

droning on about the "perils of fame." For speak-singing "every-bloke" Skinner,

playing the hotel-trashing hotshot was an alienating move, suggesting that he'd

already lost touch with the geezers and gits and become that dullest of

creatures—the self-loathing superstar.

Make that second-dullest: With Everything Is

Borrowed,

Skinner has evolved into the intolerable former drinking buddy who's taken up

jogging and "found himself"—all pithy platitudes and clunky

philosophizing. Skinner's self-actualization prattle would be more admirable if

it had any real insight, but the best he can offer are cheap aphorisms

tailor-made for tote bags, like the Buddhism-lite refrain, "I came to this world

with nothing / And I leave with nothing but love / Everything else is just

borrowed." Elsewhere, he sounds the well-duh alarm on the environment

("The Way Of The Dodo"), provides a limp argument for secular humanism on "Alleged

Legends" ("When you're bad you will feel sad / That's the religion I live by"),

and on "The Strongest Person I Know," serenades his soulmate with a lullaby so

preciously twee, it's practically borne on the wings of smiling bluebirds.

Adding to the banality, Skinner's strict adherence

to organic instruments—though inventively arranged—frequently drift

into Muzak: Even the would-be banger "Heaven For The Weather" boasts an Up With

People melody straight out of a Disney filmstrip on volunteerism. Only on the

swelling, string-driven closer "The Escapist" does Skinner pull off sentiment

without drowning in sap, achieving the album's one truly moving moment, though

it's couched in an obvious "dust in the wind" epiphany). Meanwhile, his

attempts at being clever—funk-punk stalker anthem "Never Give In," fizzy

disco ode to male bonding "The Sherry End"—suffer from Skinner's decision

to eschew all modern references, typically his ace in the hole. Here's hoping

that on his next, rumored-to-be-final album, Skinner takes his own advice and

doesn't forget the Rizla.