Unless they've been stood up in a wine bar or booked in for a marathon aromatherapy session, most civilians might never find themselves listening closely to Bic Runga, a huge star in her native New Zealand. Her third album yields its virtue extremely slowly. With its almost unruffled surface of expensive wistfulness and tasteful arrangements, in which former Crowded House Neil Finn takes a hand, it is lifestyle wallpaper for listeners who find Katie Melua verging on death-metal. Yet beneath its intimate song-thrush chanson sheen, her stiff upper lip struggles not to tremble with inner anguish. Though as a lyricist she is seemingly incapable of coining a fresh image, her restrained sincerity transcends the banalities she mouths, saving the best 'til nearly last in Ruby Nights, a ghostly echo of Heartbreak Hotel.