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The album is called Pain Disappears and if it were an over-the-counter analgesic it would be Neurofen Plus. You know, the stuff that contains codeine and is intermittently abused by over-worked urbanites craving something safe and readily available to soften the edges of their hard, modern lives.

Tailor-made for those too soft, whimsical or scared to stick their hand into a bottle of pills every night, Pain Disappears is lightweight musical narcotic guaranteed to smear out the nastiness of a long day in the office, or the latest argument with your partner.

Those of you who recall Mlle Caro & Frank Garcia's gossamer single Far Away will have a good idea what to expect here.

Parisian DJ darling and Rex Club resident, Mlle Caro, aka Caroline Laher, brings "a distilled rock'n roll sound in a very good electro selection" while composer/arranger/producer Franck Garcia provides a gentle musical and vocal foil. Wisely chosen opener Always You perfectly mimics the vibe of Far Away and highlights the luxuriant interplay of their voices. Apologies treads similar territory but with an added dose of richly masculine pathos. It so prettily evokes a raffish lover walking alone, shoulders bowed, beneath raindrops and neon lights in a city at night that it just about slips into parody.

As the pill poppers among you know, the first couple are always the best. So it is here. Dead Souls, Mon Ange, Hold Me,No Name… all interchangeably pretty yet somehow stultifying. The treacly boy-girl harmonies and winsome pop backdrop owe a great deal to shoegaze (try anything on Sarah Records, or mid-period Mojave 3 stuff, for the spiritual equivalent). However, the songs are stretched to electronica proportions - five-and-a-half or six-and-a-half minutes usually - at which point they collapse under their own fluffy weight like so many soufflés.

I Don't Want emerges in the middle of the album like a rock in a Siren sea, but the album immediately slithers back into a sweet, sticky haze of sound. The longer it goes on the more you find your brain throwing up random, feverish images: sidewalk cafés, strawberries, picnics in Jane Austen novels, elegantly mournful women walking the Left Bank in their dead lover's black cardigan, that sort of thing.

Despite - or perhaps because of - this Pain Disappears has been fulsomely received. Perhaps in part because criticising such a thoroughly nice record feels a little bit like kicking a puppy. However, for all its instant, ear-pleasing charm it lacks a real emotional core. Like low-grade opiates, a couple of doses will provide a warm, fuzzy glow. Anything much beyond that is overkill.