He may be “a million different people from one day to the next”, but if recent form is anything to go by, only one of those Richard Ashcrofts is allowed into the studio.

That’ll be the one who cashed in his Verve gold for the Gloucestershire pile where his wife Kate made a family to go with their seven hens; the Britpop icon who gave domestic bliss the chance to do for his career what it did to John Lennon when he recorded Double Fantasy. It would be churlish to wish them anything but the best.

At the same time, if the dwindling sales of Ashcroft’s two solo albums are anything to go by, he should give the studio keys to the mad bloke in the Bittersweet Symphony video. Heaven help anyone who got in that guy’s way, but at least he made some good records.

It would be a nice story if Ashcroft’s third solo set were the album we wanted him to make. And, encouragingly, Break the Night with Colour is probably his best solo single to date, if you set aside the vague lyrical generalities. It starts off with a harpsichord and knows better than to stray from the minor key in which it begins.

What’s not to like? Nothing really, but neither should we kid ourselves that an artistic rebirth is afoot. On a conservative, uneven album it’s telling that the other best song here — a waft of Radio Two catnip called Music is Power — works primarily because it sounds like Sister Sledge’s Thinking of You. Central as they are to the Ashcroft “brand”, even the statutory flotilla of strings can’t quite fill the creative vacuum at the heart of windy power-ballads such as Cry till the Morning and Why Do Lovers.

At the same time, it’s unlikely that anyone would buy a Richard Ashcroft album hoping for innovation. An evening with one of his albums is a little bit like being 9 and winning the chance to have dinner with your hero. The entire enterprise is pointless if you don’t already believe they are amazing.

A case in point is Words Just Get in the Way, a sort of Verve-ified Everybody Hurts that ends up seeming to be more about its singer’s healing effect than its ostensible subject. If you’re prepared to make that leap of faith here — or at the very least, not giggle — there’s every chance that you will make it on the rest of these songs.

Parlophone