Although Aztec Camera purported to be a band, it was really just Roddy Frame with trimmings. Surf, his second "solo" album, is Frame shorn of any trimmings whatsoever, being merely the winsome singer and his acoustic guitar, recorded in booming close-up. All of Frame's traditional strengths are here - the yearning voice, the meandering melodies and the none-too-obvious lyrics - but so are his weaknesses. Basically, Frame tends to stick to a fairly narrow palette of musical shapes and chord patterns, and hearing 11 songs in this skeletal format sometimes leaves them cruelly exposed. There are some treats if sampled sparingly, such as the wistful Over You, the melancholy I Can't Start Now and especially Big Ben, which unravels to a glowingly Stevie Wonder-ish climax. Nice, but could have been nicer. How about a few jokes from Edwyn Collins next time?