** Cher

BELIEVE

(Warner Bros.)

Cher's ascendancy as a dance-music diva (via remixed singles) hasn't kept her from filling her albums with one crappy ballad after another. But this time around, beat junkies won't have to seek out the dance remixes for their rhythm fix. Even though her latest CHR battle plan is as programmatic as ever, with 10 songs averaging in length at 4:40, a river of friendly house grooves runs through it. Which makes it her most consistent album in years, maybe even ever. But I ask, would you rather have Prefab Sprout's Paddy McAloon scripting a spaghetti-western ballad for her the way he did on 1996's It's A Man's World, or schlockmeistress Diane Warren diffusing her rays of light here?

For all her obeisance to electronica trends, Cher apparently still won't (can't?) shake her dependence on song doctors. That reliance meant you could usually expect at least one track per album to catch you off guard. Here, however, the club-bound uniformity ensures that all we'll remember is the banal gestalt of the thing. In other words, Believe has about as much import and utility as a Rozalla album. On second thought, maybe beat junkies should seek out the dance remixes.

-- Kevin John