It’s not often a musician has too many ideas, but that’s the oddly troubling case with Nelly Furtado’s second album. The virtues of her 2 million–selling debut, Whoa, Nelly! — freewheeling eclecticism, dippy Daisy Age charm — are magnified and distorted here until they become vices. Within the hyperactivity, there’s no dialogue between the musical genres; they shout over one another in a cacophonous jumble.

So the jaunty hip-hop of “Fresh Off the Boat” becomes entangled in ear-splitting melismas, Portuguese scatting and, possibly, someone trying to maneuver a kitchen sink through the studio door. The relentless Latin stomp of “Força” (Portuguese for kick ass, apparently) wants to be uplifting but ends up merely tiring. Furtado, meanwhile, can barely sing a line without gasping, gabbling or giggling. If she were a kid, you’d tell her to stop fidgeting and sit still.

Behind the exotic window dressing, Furtado’s real talent is far more conservative. You can picture arenas full of swaying arms during the sweeping AOR choruses of “Try” and “One-Trick Pony.” Everywhere, though, lurk lyrics so graceless they sound as if they’ve been badly translated from the Japanese. “Força,” we are told, “is the soundtrack to your ever-flowing life.” And “Island of Wonder” (“The smile is bigger than the Atlantic Sea/It happens to bring out the Atlantis in me”) is Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” rewritten for New Age crystal shops.

There’s clearly imagination here, with strange little sonic tweaks and tics at every turn, but only once does it gel into something satisfying. The rapturous-glissando finale, “Childhood Dreams,” seems to have wandered in from a different record, possibly one by Björk. Even here, though, Furtado alternates between Björk’s breathy gulps and Kate Bush’s vertiginous trills, as if auditioning for an alt-chanteuse version of American Idol. It sums up the whole album — Furtado could still be a fascinating talent, if only she stopped trying so damn hard.