Risk-Free Fare From Phil Collins : PHIL COLLINS “ . . . But Seriously.” Atlantic * 1/2:<i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic). </i>

Since Collins hardly has deviated from the hot-selling, Grammy-sweeping formula of his last solo album, an alternative title might be in order here: “No Gumption Required.”

This is stand-pat, risk-free music-making, as safe and innocuous as it gets. Take a temperate, user-friendly singing voice, stir in plenty of catchy hooks, shiny production and toe-tapping rhythms, punching it all up with bright horns or mellowing it out with a caressing keyboard haze, and there you have it: more hit product.

The formula would be easier to swallow if Collins were just a blithe popster purveying silly love songs, but he tries here to stake a claim to substance as well. We get a song about African famine and apartheid, two unrelated issues for the price of one. We get songs about the homeless, and about the indifference of the powers that be. But instead of poetic insight and edgy, unsettling music calculated to bring home the roiling conflict and bitter emotion at the heart of these issues, Collins feeds us stock images and the sort of routine pity and vaguely helpless feeling already familiar to anybody who reads a newspaper or watches a news broadcast.

A similar blandness pervades Collins’ songs about broken love: How can you capture depths of aching feeling when nearly every line is a cliche, and every note comes across sleek and unmussed? “ . . . But Seriously” may be the sincere, craftsmanlike and well-intentioned effort of a real nice guy, but it all adds up to the sound of a fat cat purring.