Morcheeba Charango
(East West)
****

Here is a phrase to dishearten the most ebullient fan: our new album features a strong world-music influence. There is something uniquely grating about the western rock star dabbling in ethnic sounds. It always seems dilettantish. However loudly the protagonist claims undying fealty to Tongan conch-shell blowing, you can bet your last pa'anga that they will drop it the second something else comes along. Then there is the aura of humourless self-aggrandising. Rock stars find it impossible to adopt an ethnic influence without implying that they single-handedly circumnavigated the globe and discovered the country themselves. A couple of sitar lessons and they are lording it about like Vasco da Gama. Perhaps worst of all is the patronising arrogance of the exercise, the steadfast belief that the ancient, hypnotic sound of the didgeridoo is somehow improved by having Jamiroquai shoobedooing over the top of it.

Taking all that into account, it is difficult not to approach Morcheeba's fourth album with a heavy heart. The London-based trio - multi-instrumentalist brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey and singer Skye Edwards - have had a curious career. Emerging at the end of 1996, Morcheeba seemed like a band who had missed an already overloaded boat. Interest in the trip-hop sound they touted was dying out as they released their debut album, Who Can You Trust? Critical reaction was sniffy. It was widely assumed they would suffer the same early bath as bandwagon-jumpers such as Mono and Crustacean. However, their follow-up, 1998's Big Calm, presciently bridged the gap between downtempo dance music and coffee-table singer-songwriter melancholy. Dido was clearly listening, but so were plenty of other people: the album garnered a Mercury nomination.

Big Calm's momentum was lost by their poppy third album Fragments of Freedom. In its wake, the search for new musical vistas has led the trio down a troubling path. Charango is named after a 10-string Brazilian guitar, made from an armadillo shell. One song is called Sao Paolo. "Sao Paolo is a concrete jungle, but the people are just amazing," says Paul Godfrey. He sounds like a student back from a gap year spent travelling, primed to bore his fellow freshers insensible with tales of derring-do in foreign climes.

First impressions, however, prove deceptive. Happily, Charango is neither the product of cultural tourism nor an exercise in patronising cliche. When most western musicians get hold of an ethnic instrument, they make records that shriek: "Listen to me! I'm using ethnic instruments! Aren't I clever?" Here, the instrumental title track plucks its 10-string armadillo-shell guitar with subtlety, possibly to avoid attracting the attention of animal rights protesters. It is not the point of the track, just another sound. Sao Paolo resists the temptation to bury itself under batucada drums, opting instead for the woozy, gentle melodicism that Morcheeba now have down pat. Tracks such as Otherwise and Way Beyond may not set the pulse racing, but they are winning songs, brilliantly realised.

Despite Morcheeba's limited framework, Charango offers clear signs of progression. What New York Couples Fight About sees Edwards duetting with Lambchop's Kurt Wagner. His despairing lyrics and careworn voice add a startling emotional kick. Uniquely in their genre, Morcheeba also have a rather black sense of humour. It is hinted at in the lyrics of What New York Couples Fight About ("Just when things were looking up," husks Wagner dolefully, "you start acting like a horse's butt"), and made explicit in Women Lose Weight, their standout collaboration with veteran rapper Slick Rick Rogers.

Born in Tottenham, Rogers is a singular figure: a British rapper who made it in the insular US hip-hop scene. He achieved this thanks to his unique style. Rogers's shtick involves relaying implausibly offensive lyrics in a lulling, sing-song voice. The author of Lick the Balls and Treat Her Like a Prostitute is on rich and terrible form here: since his marriage, his wife has grown fat, leaving him with no alternative but to kill her. Synopsis doesn't really do the song justice. Morcheeba are meant to provide mild and inoffensive music, but Women Lose Weight is uneasily hilarious, and entirely out of step with the band's supposed raison d'etre.

There's no denying that Charango could have done with a few more moments like that. It could also have done with far fewer tasteful saxophone solos, which inevitably recall the music that accompanies an erotic thriller's choreographed romping. For the most part, however, Charango avoids the blight of blandness as skilfully as it avoids the excesses typical of western pop stars playing world music. Under the circumstances, you have to conclude that Morcheeba have scored a victory against the odds.