The third album by chill-out dance-pop act Zero 7 finds it in the process of trading one set of moods for another—which proves as easy as switching out vocalists. On about a third of The Garden, the songs are sung by Sia, an Australian chanteuse whose icy, growly vocals have provided a touch of Euro-cool to prior Zero 7 tracks, as well as the music of Massive Attack and William Orbit. If anything, Sia now sounds like an electronic-music cliché. Need a little shrill, blue-eyed soul over your shimmering easy-listening techno track? Call Sia. But she does prove an asset to The Garden at least once: on the album-closing "Waiting To Die," where the swinging-'60s Brit-movie sound frames her voice differently, as the sound of youth turned old before its time.
Otherwise, The Garden's star is José González, the Swedish folkie whose elegant album Veneer and cult hit "Crosses" beguiled audiences worldwide last year. "Crosses" gets the Zero 7 treatment on The Garden—it's stretched out to almost three times its original length, with González's delicate finger-picking replaced by bongos, handclaps, vibrating synths, disco strings, and a background choir. It isn't an improvement by any means, but any chance to hear that feather-light "Crosses" melody again is worth taking, just as it's a gift to hear González's foggy voice play across the supple album-opener "Futures," sounding like an outtake from some late-'70s Crosby, Stills & Nash record. González pops up again on the blippy "Today" and the predominately acoustic "Left Behind," lending his vocals, his guitar, and his songwriting. The Garden is an enjoyably light album on the whole, but it's most remarkable for the stealthy way it smuggles in an even finer four-song José González EP.