From Monday To Sunday

NICK HEYWARD: "From Monday To Sunday" (Epic)

Twelve years on from his sparkling entrance to Pop's proud parade as the leader of Haircut 100 and almost ten years since he featured at the business end of either the single or album charts Nick Heyward's first outing for his new label in many ways epitomises the problems facing the born-again thirty-something musician.

Certainly, his best moments with the ton-up tonsorials and initial string of solo singles are fondly remembered by those of us with a hankering for the Pop perfection which was sought in an almost religious way in the early 80s, but to call in that debt of devotion a decade later is a significantly tougher task.

From Monday To Sunday isn't really a failure on a musical level, in fact it's a pleasantly nostalgic collection which finds Nick attempting to reconcile his teenage memories - 'Caravan' with its references to listening to The Jam while on holiday at Camber Sands and the addictively rising melody of 'January Man' are the best examples - with a soupcon of mild thirtysomething angst. The opening 'He Doesn't Love You Like I Do' boasts a riff pinched from The Rutles and a melody redolent of East Side Story -period Squeeze and breezes quite jauntily into ' Kite' and ' Into Your Life' . . . easy-on-the-ear, balmy-to-the-brain Pop songs with Heyward sounding like a man who's fairly content with his lot in life; he sings well throughout, apart from a disturbing tendency to sound like Roger Waters on 'How Do You Live Without Sunshine?' and 'All I Want You To Know', the latter a ringer for 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'.

I could get all cutting-edge here and deride From Monday To Sunday as yet another example of muddled record company minds inflicting non-challenging mediocrity on the public but I won't, for the simple reason that most of this is enjoyable and will undoubtedly prove so to anyone who ever succumbed to the shiny lemon and yellow Pop of Heyward in his heyday. Nick had his fantastic day in the sun, he's certainly a rank outsider to ever get there again but you can't hang a man for trying and from the craft of the songs to the endearing photo of a mixed grill on the sleeve this is a brave if commercially doomed attempt to resurrect his career.

• George Byrne