Comeback Of The Week: Alex Parks

No contest, really, but Alex Parks releases her second album Honesty today in the next episode of her search for a musical niche. Not Lavigne-y enough for the tweenagers, and not Dido enough for the Bridget Jones market, Alex is at least in a capacity to position herself as an English Melissa Etheridge, and even a few Americans seem to think so. That's assuming her record label Polydor think that England needs one, or would know what to do with one if England did.

Unfortunately, one could gather the extent of Polydor's confidence when the release of what was supposed to be Alex's comeback single, Looking For Water, was pushed back to download-only at the last moment after early reviews of the track proved less than lukewarm. Not even hand-hot.

Vocally, Alex's emotional sincerity can be startling (although the Gazette should again invoke its target-audience disclaimer), but musically, she's a long away from making the breakthrough that, say, Robbie Williams landed with his last-chance-saloon release of Angels. Allegedly, last year she was offered and turned down a certain Shiver, with which Natalie Imbruglia has been ever-present on the radio ever since.

Vanishing and resurfacing after the first series of Fame Academy eventually took Lemar to a handful of Mobos plus a Brit Award or two; career-wise, the best that can be said for Alex is that she's the last contestant standing from the second. (Especially in Norway, where she's attracted an unexpected - OK, much-to-be-expected - following.)

Until she finds her own Guy Chambers or Linda Perry, her best showcase is going to remain the covers which made up a full half of her 2003 album Introduction. They include a heartfelt Beautiful (what was the Gazette saying about Linda Perry?), an unreleaseable-thanks-to-Gary-Jules Mad World, and a version of the Eurythmics' Here Comes The Rain Again which Annie Lennox thought was almost better than her own.

Of course, you wait ages for a cute and credible talent-show singer and then they all come along at once, so here are Aneta Langerová from Czech Idol, who won it, and Briana Ramírez-Rial from American Idol 3, who didn't.