The write touch

CD CHOICE/ROCK: THE SCRIPTThe Script - Sony/BMG ****

Two of the three members of this new Dublin three-piece used to be name producers on the Los Angeles music scene, working with acts such as The Neptunes and Rodney Jerkins. They evidently picked up a big bag of sonic tricks along the way: their debut album comes with the sort of studio sheen that other bands take a handful of albums to nail down.

The Scripts' first single, We Cry, a big radio hit, was as good an introduction as any to their sound, a soulful vocal line over a tight melody that displayed a maturity well beyond their years. The follow-up single, The Man Who Can't Be Moved, is a slower-tempo affair that allows singer Danny O'Donoghue full rein to showcase a very strong and resonant voice.

Elsewhere, The Script vary the mood and tone with more r'n'b- meets-indie-guitar-inflected material, and on tracks such as Fall for Anythingthey manage to produce a very full sound for a three piece. At other times, though, they can get a bit too over-wrought for their own good, as on End Where I Begin, which could have done with a sparser arrangement. It's the sort of song that will only invite comparisons to Keane.

This is very much an AOR album, although The Script manage to pull themselves back from the brink of that genre's worse excesses with constant contemporary flourishes throughout the songs. There's a lot going on in the background but, thankfully, they seem to have run it though a de-cluttering filter.

The group are as un-Irish sounding as The Republic of Loose. This is an album that could do serious damage on US radio - it has the sort of sound that radio pluggers are crying out for - and could well establish The Script as fine purveyors of smooth indie- soul.  www.thescriptmusic.com Download tracks: The Man Who Can't Be Moved, We Cry