Beyoncé Knowles - I Am ... Sasha Fierce

Beyoncé Knowles' third solo album has a lovely tempting pitch.

Short sufficiently to fit on one CD, it is nevertheless cleave over two.

The second, ... Sasha Fierce, contains the ordinary pop-R&B, but the first is being sold as offering a rare insight into Knowles' true psyche: "I Am ... is about who I am from below all the makeup, below the lights, below all the exciting superstar drama."

It sounds curiosity! In interviews, Beyonce is careful to the point of banality.

Were she any precision, she had have to dole out Gaviscon during interviews to stop journalists bringing up their lunch.

Just from time to time, however, her music has given a impression of something rather more torrid, stringy and fascinating lurking behind the public character - not least Survivor, a good riddance message to deceased Destiny's Child members LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett so livid that it circumstance a lawsuit from the duo.

Alas, there isn't anything remotely like it on I Am ... Its currency is severely self-help slowies, that could have sprung from the dread pen of Linda Perry, victualler of banality power ballads to Pink.

All here look like something you might hear in the background when declined X Factor competitors cry on Dermot O'Leary's shoulder, which seems suitable, because as the realisation dawns that it is everything going to sound like that, you feel prepared to have a little cry yourself?

It's not just that the music on I Am ... is boring - despite, out of the way from the growling guitars and tumbling drums of "That is Why You are Beautiful", it is.

It's that there is something underwhelming about the entire project. Last time around, on the sanitaryware-themed concept album B'Day, Beyonce set Rodney Jerkins, Rich Harrison and Kasseem "Swizz Beatz" Dean to labour in close studios, effectively pitting three of the world's biggest urban producers against each other.

Here, Beyonce seems to have picked contributor on the basis of their striking names rather than their CVs. (In justice, who would not want to work with people called E Kidd Bogart, Hugo Chakrabongse and James Fauntleroy II?)

The I Am ... team's bygone form covered songs for Leona Lewis, Natasha Bedingfield, James Blunt and Shayne Ward. One of them co-wrote Ian Brown's Dolphins Were Monkeys; another was the guitarist in EMF.

It's difficult not to wonder who she's going to team up next time. The bassist from the Seahorses? Dermo out of Northside?

Not all on ... Sasha Fierce works properly.

The sonic trickery on the most tentative track, Diva, isn't interesting sufficiently to turn aside you from the non-attendance of a melody.

Almost the same weird, but much better, is "Video Phone", which bring in us to the unbelievable figure of Beyoncé Knowles, amateur pornographer: "You want me naked? If you like this position you can tape it."

She does not make for the world's most probable Reader's Wife, but it does not matter, because the spare, sinister backcloth of groans and echoing electronics is so thrilling.

There's a lesson in there you wish she had heeded while making the seemingly soul-baring I Am ...: in pop, honesty is not always the best policy.

The official Beyonce site

The full I am Sasha Fierce Review

The V Festival Tickets 2010 (I hope she will be invited next year :) )