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Annie Lennox on the cover of her new album

The British music industry is in the midst of yet another crisis. As ever, the wounds are mostly self-inflicted. Against a backdrop of falling sales, the industry has undermined the singles chart to the point where few know or care what the current Number One is.

The short-termism that led to the explosion of manufactured pop acts is coming home to roost - even members of the Popstar Rivals boys, One True Voice, have admitted that they wouldn't buy their new single.

The quest for new ways to sell new records has taken another turn of late as a succession of artists have returned with a new sound, a new look and renewed hope of keeping their tattered sales flags flying.

This month, Cerys Matthews and Skin have resurfaced as figures unrecognisable from their hit-making pomp. Annie Lennox makes a comeback and singer Dave Gahan is taking a sabbatical from Depeche Mode to go solo.

Matthews probably knew the game was up for her band Catatonia shortly before the release of their final album, Paper Scissors Stone, in August 2001.

Her hedonistic lifestyle and the sheer tension of fronting a group alongside her former long-term amour, Mark Roberts, ensured that their last stand was more cold custard than General Custer.

That September, Catatonia officially ceased trading, to be remembered only for a couple of Zeitgeist-grabbing hits, Mulder and Scully and Road Rage.

A spell in rehab and marriage to an American outside Catatonia's circle helped exorcise Matthews's personal demons. To exorcise her musical ones and save her ailing career, she has been transformed. Gone are the shrill bellowing, the post-punk plod and a ludicrously affected Welsh accent, replaced by proper singing, thoughtful playing and a lovely rendition of the Welsh hymn Arglwydd Dyma Fi.

Matthews's reinvention, I suspect, was not entirely of her own instigation, although she would hardly have been an unwilling participant.

She fled the temptations of London, headed to Nashville, immersed herself in the introspective, adult alt.country stylings of Lambchop, Lucinda Williams and The Handsome Family to emerge last week with her debut solo album, Cockahoop.

At one stroke she had repositioned herself as a countrytinged songwriter and interpreter. She may never again reach the heights of Catatonia-but she has given herself a chance. It may seem a musical makeover of the most cynical kind, but for all its flaws Cockahoop sounds like the work of a woman at one with herself.

After signing to Virgin in 1999, Skunk Anansie failed to repeat the indie success that had taken them there in the first place. They disbanded a few months earlier than Catatonia and lead singer Deborah "Skin" Dyer disappeared. Within days of Matthews's yee-haw return, Skin's head appeared above the parapet once more.

Gone are the Sapphic rantings of Skunk Anansie, which resulted in such singalongs as Yes It's F***ing Political, Intellectualise My Blackness and Little Baby Swastikkka.

Instead, Skin's debut solo album, Fleshwounds, showcases the fluffy, radio-friendly Faithfulness and Don't Let Me Down. Commercially, it will not draw from the well of disenfranchised Skunk Anansie devotees, but another dumperbound career has been given a new lease of life by a handbrake U-turn.

The stark reinventions of Matthews and Skin are born of necessity. For both artists, the odds of succeeding from a position of sales weakness are high. Annie Lennox is another case entirely.

As one of rock's richest and most successful women, she may do what she pleases when she pleases and, without the need for another day's work, can live high on the vegetarian hog for the rest of her days.

Artistic need, however, has little to do with financial security and, to the backdrop of popping champagne corks at her record company, she has chosen to resurrect her career with Bare, her first album of self-penned material since 1992.

Her image has altered so radically that on the back of the album she feels compelled to justify its grotesque front where, bare-shouldered she resembles an extra from a George A Romero film.

But the contents are her stock in trade: a cathartic session with her therapist. As she herself has noted, it would be better displayed on the selfhelp sections of book stores rather than in record shops.

However, Lennox has a fanatical, huge core following who regard her as everything a self-analytical artist should be. Moreover, as if to show her commitment to the resurrected cause, she is embarking upon her first solo tour, which reaches Sadler's Wells at the end of next week.

And there is Dave Gahan. As Depeche Mode's singer, he has always been the mouthpiece for songwriters Vince Clarke or Martin Gore. A solo career has always seemed inevitable, but a long-standing love affair with heroin meant that until recently he was far too busy to leave the cocoon of his band.

Now, clean for several years, he has taken the plunge as Depeche Mode take a rest. What Gahan sounds like is well-known. What a Dave Gahan song sounds like is another matter entirely.

The good news is that the understandably self-analytical Paper Monsters (written by Gahan with multi-instrumentalist-Knox Chandler) eclipses the solo covers albums of Gore and, despite it lacking Gore's assured touch, Depeche Mode fans will adore it. Capitalising on his magnetism as a performer, his tour in July will ensure that he sells a formidable quantity of records.

Reinvention and resurrection must be the very oxygen of popular music. The unwieldy beast reinvents itself almost from week to week, regurgitating its past while incorporating rap and hip-hop as seamlessly as it once did prog and psychedelia.

Any artist worth treasuring maintains both their interest and that of their customers by musically moving on; sometimes subtly, sometimes radically.

Those who successfully grow are the artists who carry their music forward. Compare Blur's jangly first album, 1991's Leisure, with this year's Think Tank.

It is as if Alexander Graham Bell had been confronted with a mobile telephone.

For Skin and Matthews, the reinvention might merely be a desperate gamble or a canny attempt to trade on the names of women who once sold records. If so, the discerning public will see through any sham sooner rather than later.

Alternatively, they may be genuine artistic progressions, which is exactly what British pop needs to pull it from its current torpor.

 

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