Best Kept Secrets

Hailing from the leafy environs of St. Albans in the British Home Counties, Cat, aka Catherine Lawless and friends, concoct a generic, hard-rock sound rooted in the spandex-wearing eighties metal revival.

Despite the largely derivative, retro feel underpinning this debut, it's all skilfully executed, well-played and impeccably produced with a handful of strong songs to boot. Cat's strongest point is undoubtedly Lawless' voice - a powerful thing altogether, which recalls every female belter from Janis Joplin to Pat Benatar. She has yet to find a discernible style of her own, however.

The backing is solid throughout but somehow less intriguing than the singing and at times a mite overwrought. The bluesy riff on 'Love' echoes Led Zeppelin's 'Rock n Roll', while the fuzzy, wah-wah guitar intro on 'Numb' boasts an uncannily similar sound to the Edge's playing on the U2 song of the same name. 'Mind Games', with its clever vocal twist and more acoustic backdrop, is the most contemporary sounding cut on the album but even then it's not much more than a clever Cardigans' pastiche.

Try and imagine how Texas might have sounded had Sharleen Spiteri been raised on metal rather than Motown and you're nearly there.