MODERN-DAY guitar hero or egomaniac villain who brought about the downfall of the legendary Stone Roses? Whatever your point of view, ex-Rose John Squire has finally emerged from the wilderness as a solo artist.

Closer to the Seventies-influenced, folky blues rock of his post-Roses York-based band The Seahorses, Squire sounds comfortable here, the weight of expectation no longer on his shoulders. He relegates his trademark Led Zeppelin-esque guitar soloing to the background, and gets down to reinventing himself as a singer. His new-found voice is unapologetically to the fore, a distinct, rough-edged, acquired-taste croak somewhere between John Lennon and Television's Tom Verlaine, all character and north western attitude.

Fellow retro pop stylists Badly Drawn Boy and Ryan Adams come to mind, but the samey tempos and chord sequences, and the hit-and-miss songwriting, see Squire's songs blurring into a rather indifferent whole - Joe Louis and All I Want being the highlights. A mixed bag of revealing flashes of inspiration and plodding rock clich, Time Changes Everything raises as many questions about the enigmatic guitarist as it answers.

Updated: 09:13 Thursday, September 19, 2002