Rating: 4 1/2 stars

  On paper, this looks like a natural for a good old-fashioned rockcrit drubbing. Female singer-songwriter gets signed by the same record label that brought you Bush, No Doubt, Phunk Junkeez et al, in the wake of Alanis Morissette and Jewel Kilcher, and on the strength of her demo of a novelty tune that chronicles her obsession with X-Files star David Duchovny. And she's even got the same grainy semi-yodel that makes listening to Morissette such an annoying experience.

  But this is an engaging little pop record. Sharp writes topical songs that betray a light, self-deprecating sense of self that's refreshing when compared to some of her more humorless, navel-gazing contemporaries. "America," a slightly sophomoric lampooning of mindless consumerism, rides along on a sprightly melody that owes more than a little to the La's' "There She Goes." On "David Duchovny," a well-constructed pop gem that alternates between a folk-rock verse section and a generic early-'90s alt. radio-rock chorus (no, I didn't mention the "g" word), Sharp is confident enough to risk sounding really dumb by rhyming her subject matter with "Why don't you love me."

  Several other songs mine the novelty-pop sub-genre: "The Cheap and Evil Girl," "Faster, Faster," "Guttermouth." Others are just well-crafted pop tunes. Overall, A Cheap and Evil Girl sounds like what might happen if some record-label A&R goatee signed an Alanis clone who turned out to be a lot smarter than he'd expected, compounding his mistake by putting her in the studio with the lads from Fountains of Wayne. An unexpected pop confection.