You know it's a bad sign when you find yourself wishing a singer were heinously off-key or hoarse or rhythm-deaf-- anything to break the unrelenting boredom of feigned cuteness. Meet Annie Hayden. The girl with a name tailor-fit for a Nancy Drew sidekick hails from Jersey City and works as a piano technician to pay the bills. Once not so long ago, she supplemented her income as a vocalist and guitarist for the Jersey-based pop band Spent.

Annie enlisted the help of John King, a fellow ex-Spent member, to record The Rub. The production, to King's credit, is sure-footed and without fault, even though that means about as much as saying that the color scheme in the latest Quaker Oats commercial is spot on. Being a fan of this formula-- the lone, multi-instrumentalist, the singer/songwriter-- I tried, through repeat listens and convulsive yawning fits, to find things to get worked up about. You wouldn't happen to have seen the latest Quaker Oats commercial, would you? Oh, the colors!

Hayden's voice is at the heart of The Rub's troubles. It's perfect; for singing harmonies; inconspicuous harmonies over a much more distinguished and substantive voice. Her voice is a lot like the waxy vanilla frosting on super-market birthday cakes, and, well... her album amounts to a deep soup-bowl of the stuff.

Juliana Hatfield, Fontaine Toups and countless others use their similarly limited voiceboxes to much greater profit. So the question becomes, if others can do it, why not Hayden? I've never cared much for Hatfield but, on occasion, she made up for her twee-er-than-thou vocal handicaps by infusing her music with tension, muscle, and melodic resolve.

Hayden's solo record, which offers little more than pretty, insipid pop numbers interspersed with brazenly pointless instrumentals, cannot claim the same. I just heard this album for the eighteenth time less than half an hour ago. I cannot recall a single melody. In fairness, I can recall the vague feeling that this or that melody was somewhat "catchy." But I, apparently, was not to be caught.

"Start a Little Late" a wispy, country-inflected, musical sweet-tart sets things in motion, kind of. The following track, "Slip is Showing," begins simply, with mellotron. Acoustic strumming joins in soon after that. The melody is solidly okay, but the delivery could neutralize a pound of meth. "The Land of Nod" is the first, and best, of several undistinguished instrumentals. It recalls the quieter moments of REM's Out of Time, but cut with flour. Things just seem to repeat cyclically after that. A couple dull acoustic-y pop tracks followed by an instrumental bore.

One exception is "Wood and Glue". Though hardly great, it features nice piano parts and a very well conceived trumpet accompaniment. There are even some nice chord changes but, as with just about everything on The Rub, they're not pronounced enough to impact. The ironically titled "Guitar Lesson," along with "Pistol and Glasses," sounds like it could have resulted from being trapped in a cell for three weeks with nothing to listen to but Led Zeppelin III.

Within the confines of ambivalently pleasant major-key pop, Hayden exhibits a talent for composition. It's just not nearly enough. I look at the window and the clouds seem to spell "boredom," and I think I can hear my furniture snoring. The album reminds me of a friend's mother who was infamous for once having added water to the pancake syrup when the bottle got low. I've never wanted pancakes enough to eat them with watered down syrup. And there are so many dozens of other albums that offer this same style of music done much, much better. But you could probably have guessed that.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie