Variety is commendable, but it's a spice some artists should use sparingly in their creative life. Too often, an artist uncertain about his gifts will fear going down the same path as his muse out of concern that he is repeating himself. In musical terms, consider something like Emancipation: it has flashes of the former self who was brilliant ("Holy River"), and mammoth portraits of the present self trying to make art from the flesh of someone else's muse. Artists like David Gedge, Elizabeth Elmore and Bobby Wratten have been superior to many of their peers in at least one area: they know their muse and they don't fiddle with any other. In his work with the Field Mice, Northern Picture Library and Trembling Blue Stars, Bobby Wratten's muse has always pecked around the moments shared with the women he has loved. In the Field Mice, beautiful songs like "Willow" were mostly about Clare Wadd; by the end of the Field Mice, and ever since, they have been concerned with Annemari Davis, whose eyes are like "trembling blue stars" -- hence the band's name.

For those unfamiliar with the Trembling Blue Stars, they sound a lot like the Lightning Seeds but exceed them in every area, being more literate, emotional and taseful. On each of the three full-length TBS records, a song deals with the broken heart Annemari has given Bobby. That Annemari continues to work with Bobby seems a bit weird, but I think it means the songs are less autobiographical than fans often assume: his lyrics should not be seen as ongoing diaries, but as tales of an area he has mulled over for the sake of his songs (whose making he may enjoy more than love itself). While wildly successful on four tracks like "Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise" and "Dark Eyes" (which even suggests Bobby's muse may be moving to a new woman), this is ultimately the least satisfying of the three great records. While better than Northern Picture Library, Broken By Whispers nonetheless recalls those days of Bobby's second band; "Fragile", "Snow Showers" and "Sleep" are more about sustaining the mood of previous songs than building upon them. Because the weaker songs manage to sustain the mood, if not the weight behind it, you get the pleasure of an hour's worth of music that can be played start to finish; what's regrettable is that for half of the songs, you concentrate not on the song at hand but on the stellar moments which arrived, like heartbreaks, long before.