Boh Runga - Right Here

Rating: * * * *

It's been 10 years since Stellar's pop-wonder of a debut Mix started the national pastime of confusing the Runga sisters.

Boh's band followed with two more albums which failed to capitalise on the first - 2006's final Something Like Strangers came with inklings of her inevitable next move to solo-dom, with many of its tracks resulting from Runga's sessions with various leading hands in the LA songwriting factory.

That's the way this, her debut solo album, has come about too. Just three of the 11 tracks credited to Runga alone, while the rest are co-writes with the likes of Mike Daly (who was in Whiskeytown with Ryan Adams), Richard Harris (a TV show music specialist), Jimmy Messer (sometime guitarist with Kelly Clarkson) and the album's overall producer Marshall Altman (also producer of Brooke Fraser's Albertine).

So it would be easy to dismiss this as impersonal and formulaic. Except, here, that's not exactly a criticism. As Stellar showed, this Runga - unlike her artsy and crafty wee sis - has always been about the pop, the joy of the hook.

Here, she's following those natural instincts and it largely works a treat, especially when her voice has its way with one of its many belt-it-out choruses. Despite having her name on the tin, this isn't attempting to be an intimate singer-songwriter set, but a collection of pop-rock tunes of grand design.

It may not be personal but it don't lack for personality - one of the album's biggest anthems Be Careful gets its inspiration from Johnny Cash, a backing vocal from art-metal mate Serj Tankian and has Runga gymnastically leaping the octaves from moody verse to banner-waving chorus.

It also impresses on This Old Heart with its tough guitar edges, and her ambitious reinterpretation of the Maori creation myth of Ranginui and Papatuanuku on The Sky and the Earth sounds suitably cosmic.

And if guitars and mid-tempo rhythms with a smattering of electronics are the default setting for most of the songs on the sultry Airwave this shifts stylishly into the late 80s torchpop territory akin to Everything But the Girl or Sade.

If anything, it's an album that pulls its punches with its mild-mannered beginning - gentle opener Starfish Sleeping shows insomnia seems to run in the family's songwriting, while the following, propulsive first single Evelyn suggests the title subject is penpal to Fraser's Albertine.

But by the time the soaring Dark Horse gallops forth, this album starts to show it will be a long stayer.

Shiny and slick it is, but its unashamed blockbuster urges and tunepower make it all the more irresistible.

Russell Baillie