** Nick Heyward

THE APPLE BED

(Creation/Big Deal)

Nick Heyward can croon sweetly enough to make the girls swoon, but he's smart enough to kick just hard enough to win some of the boys over too. The former leader of Haircut 100 employs melodramatic strings, bittersweet lyrics, and the occasional charged guitars on The Apple Bed, his sixth solo album. The lion's share of the songs rely on McCartneyesque pop devices, such as horn flourishes and airy backing vocals. Heyward relies heavily on plaintive love and breakup songs, but he adds grungier guitars to his pop arsenal on several of the disc's stronger tunes. Hell, "Reach Out," with its heavy bottom end and Mellancampish guitar riff, may be the closest the former new-wave sweater boy ever gets to arena rock.

-- Dave Brigham