The opening strains of Arithmetic, the lead track on Brooke Fraser's debut What To Do With Daylight send shivers down my spine. Every. Time. I. Hear. It. When she sings "You are the one I want, you are the one I want" she is the epitome of heartfelt and heartache, and you have fallen desperately in love with her and her music by the time the song finishes.

Which is a shame. It's great dinner conversation, it's the first get to know you drink where you find out the person sitting opposite you shares your passion for the late-Impressionist period and Chinese opera (I'm picking things at random, no really...). There's a lingering kiss on the cheek good night and a second date arranged during which you discover that beyond your semi-obscure passions, you have nothing in common.

The real tragedy here is that while you're aware the attraction was fleeting, the person staring back at you thinks this is the second great date. Oh dear, how to excuse one's self? Somebody always gets hurt.

This is all by way of saying that when Brook Fraser fires on all cylinders, she is as good as anyone else out there. The problem lies in the songs, in the production, and in what they don't do. Opener Arithmetic has the hook both lyrically and musically to keep you wanting more, and the production suits it to a tee. From there though, the songs begin to blend into each other, and even after multiple listens I still find myself arriving at the end with no idea how many tracks I have just heard or even if I heard different ones at all.

Taking the time to go back through the album and reading through the lyrics, Brooke Fraser does obviously make the effort to explore different themes and influences and it would be ridiculous to suggest otherwise. The trouble is we never stray too far from a devotion to someone or something. There are no convincing tales beyond the opening track of true love or the Big Issues (tm), and certainly nothing that suggests the songs were born out of the harsh light of experience in the wider world.

By the time the middle of the album is reached, with pseudo-reggae beat and backing "oooohs" that would make Sean Paul's mother proud on Reverie, we're left looking around, wondering where the angel who penned the opening track went. The tragedy of it all is that the songs aren't even bad, they're just forgettable. Producer Brady Blade deserves a slap on the wrist here, for in failing to instil Fraser's songs with the necessary musical hooks, he has left her with an album she should by all means be proud of, but one that nobody will remember some months by now.

Having already opened for David Bowie in New Zealand and on John Mayer's April '04 Australian tour (where I was actually lucky enough to see her), her people are putting her in front of the right audiences. What remains to be seen is if she can turn her engaging live performance into a second album; one that instils her writing with hooks while retaining the poetic delicacy already displayed.