RECORDED around the world in 25 days, backed by the peacenik Daily Mirror and rush-released this week, Hope is the War Child charity album in aid of Iraqi children.

As is the way with such records - 1 Love, last year's NME War Child album, and before that, 1995's 1.25 million-selling Help for Bosnia - the 17 tracks comprise a ragbag collection of celebrity acts giving their services for free. Hence the ubiquitous good-cause foot soldier Billy Bragg shares album space with boy band Blue's Lee Ryan, Yusuf Islam and Travis.

Aside from the cause, the principle reason for purchase is novelty and curiosity value. You could live without Sir Paul McCartney's new rehearsal version of Calico Skies or David Bowie's remix of his first nearly good tune in years, Everyone Says Hi; and no one should have to live with Ronan Keating's unctuous live rendition of Elvis's In The Ghetto.

New quiet, magnolia songs come from Travis with the earnest, melancholic opener The Beautiful Occupation; Tom McRae's typically beautiful Border Song, Spiritualized's lovely acoustic Hold On, Moby's haunting Nearer (feminine vocal and all) and Billy Bragg, at his most tender and maudlin on The Wolf Covers Its Tracks.

The halcyon peace-campaigning era of the Sixties and Seventies is recalled by Avril Lavigne, who proves she really can sing to surprising effect by going soft on Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heaven's Door; New Order, as they stroll lazily through Jimmy Cliff's Vietnam with not enough care in the world; and Beth Orton, in a spacious and soulful account of The 5 Stairsteps' O-O-H Child.

Beverley Knight pays tribute to the Stevie Wonder vocal style on Wonder's Love's In Need Of Love Today; The Charlatans pursue their soul fixation with Curtis Mayfield to its ultimate conclusion with a swell, falsetto take on his 1972 single We Got To Have Peace; and George Michael takes himself very seriously on The Grave, that Don McLean protest song from his first Top Of The Pops appearance in 17 years, even if it is difficult not to think of George and his infamous weapon of mass distraction.

Love and peace are essential ingredients on any war-related albums since the days of George Harrison's Bangladesh project. So Blue's moonlighting Lee Ryan has written the poppiest, sweetest anthem here, Stand Up As People - the kind of nave sentiment made for a Cliff Richard Christmas hit - while Jamaican dancehall stalwart Yellowman helpfully suggests Love Is The Answer in tandem with Basement Jaxx.

The album closes on an historic note: Yusuf Islam, the artist known in a former pop life as Cat Stevens, contributes his first English-language recording in 25 years, made in Johannesburg with the Incwenga choir. The track is Peace Train, his protest song from 1971. How little the world has moved on since then.

Updated: 09:59 Thursday, April 24, 2003