You've got your daddy's eyes. And your daddy was an alcoholic. I've got something in my throat. I need to be alone, when I suffer. So wipe the makeup from your face, tie your hair and gently fall from grace. Give me a call; when you're so sensitive, it's a long way to fall. You fell from my view. Son, you've got a way to fall. Let me stay while they all fall to the ground. There's an outlaw on the highway-- and she's falling. And she's falling.

If it sounds like I've stumbled onto someone's LiveJournal account, it's because James Walsh's lyrics read like a diary. And believe me, dear reader, when I tell you that each of the sentences above is from one of his songs. Of the eleven tracks on Love Is Here, Starsailor's debut album, more than half mention the world "fall" in some tense. Strange, too, because in interviews, Walsh has mentioned that the album title was chosen for its positivity, in the light of the cynicism they feel in the world around them. Yet, there's no doubt that Starsailor's Q-mag accolades and their trip up the charts has been influenced by Coldplay, Travis and those other melancholy radiorock bands from their native England.

Walsh's voice, for his part, makes and breaks the band. His wavering baritone doesn't sound much like a twenty-year-old, though it does bear an uncanny similarity at times to both Live's Ed Kowalcyzk and David Gray. But his bandmates play foil to his ambition with the simplicity of their arrangements; James Stelfox's bass and Ben Byrne's drums create a vaguely soulful backbeat, and Barry Westhead's keyboards add ornamentation, swelling during the inevitably overblown climax of each song. Producer Steve Osbourne should probably get credit as the fifth bandmember; his work with the Happy Mondays to Curve to Paul Oakenfold has given him the experience to craft a truly special sound here, lush and yet conveying an acoustic atmosphere.

If only Walsh & Co. knew such subtlety. The energy and emotion in these ballads comes across a hell of a lot more sincere than the Matchbox Twenties of the world, but Starsailor err so far on the opposite end that you're beaten about the ears. On the afore-referenced "Alcoholic," Walsh whines, "Don't you know you've got your daddy's eyes/ your daddy was an alcoholic/ But your mother kept it all inside/ And she threw it all away." The sharp piano chords mix with his voice like a long-lost Journey tear-jerker, and you know you can expect the entrance of the drums just as the second verse begins. And Walsh's delivery, sounding so deliberate and forced, doesn't do the track any favors.

"Tie Up My Hands," the opener, plods forward with soft bass and softer bass drum, and it's a nice enough lure. But Walsh adopts this nursery-rhyme vocal hook: "Take the disaffected life/ Men who ran the company ran your life/ You could have been his wife." He wants to be the tragic hero so bad, and the chorus blazes with dramatic guitarwork while he reels off: "I wanna hold you but my hands are tied/ I wanna stay here but I've been denied!" He is pretty hunky, I have to admit, but Bono's ego stole the same earnest rockstar pose long ago and forever doomed his followers to imitation. Plus, you really can't forgive lyrics like, "She just wept/ Like I could not ignore/ How can I act/ When my heart's on the floor?" If Walsh didn't steal the scene so much, you might notice the other musicians' contributions more often. The constant acoustic strum and piano progressions on "Poor Misguided Fool" near Tindersticks territory, and in the middle of "Talk Her Down," the guys bust into this beautiful, churning wreck of a breakdown, keyboards swirling and cymbals crashing.

Love Is Here isn't bad, and its prospect for radio play is far more appealing than, say, Train. The four just don't have the depth of their admitted influences-- Neil Young, Van Morrison and Tim Buckley (the band is named after one of his albums)-- though they have much room for growth. Most of the songs sound too similar: a brooding verse matched by a bombastic chorus, and Walsh's "fall" imagery doesn't seem so much conceptual as it does repetitive. Occasionally, as on the closer "Coming Down," Walsh hushes his voice into intimacy as he asks, "Were you always coming down?" But usually it's the most blatant of dashboard confessionals: "Daddy, I've got nothing left/ My life is good/ My love's a mess."

People get onto indie rock for being inaccessible, but I'll take Pavement's "latent causes, sterile gauzes and the bedside morale" any day over Starsailor's "there's a hole inside my boat, and I need to stay afloat, for the summer." Maybe Starsailor will hit it big here in the post-September-11th U.S., as they did in the U.K.; they've got that whiny doleful sensitivity that appeals to the masses. But I don't get the cathartic release they're aiming for. Instead, I just feel like falling.