Connick's celebrity status still stands as a direct result of his days as an ersatz Sinatra -- not as a pouty supporting actor, supermodel husband or gun-toting neo-conservative pin-up. To a certain degree, that's a crying shame -- at least since I assume I'm the only new fan that he'd managed to earn after shifting musical gears.

Star Turtle is unabashedly branded as a concept album -- something about a tortoise from outer space who crawls around Bourbon Street -- and, unlike the last time, Harry is serving as his own lyricist. Yet he's continuing to operate on the premise that bourgeois rock is best served in a Battlestar Galactica-inspired setting, while the voice of the turtle itself is given a synthesized Lorne Greene-style timbre.

Being split into three distinct sections helps Star Turtle's vamps to flow in a more digestible fashion. The first cluster is the least complicated, where Connick gets strangely comfortable spouting exhortations like "whacka-whacka-whacka-whacka-wham." Basically, he's fashioning himself as a less anxiety-prone version of Billy Joel, especially on "Hear Me In the Harmony." The proceedings get a lot more blistering around the middle, as Harry breaks out the mini-Moog and the guitars get much more intense -- that his vocals here are most reminiscent of Barry Manilow is hardly a hindrance.

Conversely, the last few tracks reveal a Connick who's determined to be mundane -- with an undercurrent of calculation that's destined to be viewed with the same head-shaking inscrutability as, say, Michael Jordan's baseball career. In the meantime, simply savor the fact that Harry is an inveterate oddball: he's gone from being a 20-year-old who preens like it's forever 1940 to a 30-year-old who's concluded that the American popular song reached a state of stylistic perfection in 1980.