PHIL Collins - Both Sides (WEA): Money can't buy me love, sang The Beatles. ''Too right mate,'' agrees Phil Collins. Even after earning a fortune, Collins still finds plenty to moan about. There are two sides to Both Sides - one miserable about love, the other miserable about life. Taking life first, Both Sides of the Story suggests we should see both sides of a situation. Thanks, Phil, the United Nations will be calling. Perhaps it will ask him to listen to both sides in Northern Ireland, subject of We Wait and Wonder : We wonder just what they were thinking/to take a life of one so young. Not quite both sides in that one. It's easy to knock the lyrics, but Collins mistakes heart-on-sleeve generalisations for pertinent insight. He is much better on the misery of love. When he turns to personal emotions, he displays far more sensitivity. I've Forgotten Everything finds him recalling a past lover: I've forgotten everything about you/'til someone says your name. This kind of emotional honesty is more likely to solve conflicts than any amount of liberal breast-beating. And the music? Pretty much what you would expect. All the misery-of-love songs are accomplished ballads, with Collins wailing and moaning, while the misery-of-life tracks are faster. Not that misery is a bad thing. It's just that these 10 songs of indistinguishably competent personal exorcism are not likely to excite anyone. Bob Dylan - World Gone Wrong (Columbia): Once Bob Dylan gets the bit between his teeth he seems reluctant to let go. The mid-'70s God Squad phase took a good three albums to shift, and now we're on to the second album of ''Bob Dylan: Blue Archaeologist''. World Gone Wrong continues the excavation of old blues material begun by last year's Good As I Been To You. All 10 tracks are cover versions of songs by people with names like Blind Old Man Lemon Doc McSmith. Again it's a solo effort - Dylan, a guitar and harmonica. He's still very nifty on the guitar, with just the right mournful soul to carry the blues. It's all plain sailing, except for his singing. Dylan's always been one to vary his vocals, suiting them to the material, but here his choice of a flat nasal twang is often irritating, and drains the songs of much potential. Dylan has had fallow periods before, and World Gone Wrong will not go down as a Dylanesque dreg. For there's nothing about it that's bad. Then again, there's nothing that's remarkable. Chris Rea - Expresso Logic (East West): Rea's melancholic growl is at its best on the smoky lounge-bar blues, though the too-smooth production gives them the atmosphere of mid-evening rather than midnight. A tidy offering. Teenage Fanclub - Thirteen (Geffen): Their melodies get sweeter, the harmonies tighter, the lyrics sharper and the noise crisper than Bandwagonesque. One step closer to the sound of Big Star. 10,000 Maniacs - MTV Unplugged (Elektra): From the band who were nearly always unplugged anyway comes their last gig together. Great reworkings of some old favourites, and a soulful cover of Patti Smith's Because the Night. Paul Young - The Crossing (Columbia): Hope in a Helpless World opens with some hope, but the rest quickly tails off towards the hopeless.
