Ben Harper, the superbly moody 30-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist, was on the phone from Raleigh, N.C.

"I'm not going to stay one Ben Harper," he said. And indeed, his new album, Burn to Shine , explores rhythm-driven mid-tempos, Delta jaunts and harder guitar sounds that expand the folk and blues and rock on his previous three releases. "Life's too short not to listen to a variety of music," he said.

But in whatever style he chooses to play, Mr. Harper commands the devotion of the exacting subculture of surfers, who now swear by Mr. Harper.

"There's not a lot of people like Ben," said Rob Machado, a pro surfer who, in 1998, joined with Peter King and Kelly Slater and, calling themselves the Surfers, made Songs From the Pipe , a blissful album produced by T-Bone Burnett. "Ben's an amazing musician," Mr. Machado said before teeing off on a San Diego golf course. "I put him in a category with, like, Bob Marley."

Chris Malloy, a surfer who also shoots documentaries and writes about surfing, experienced his Ben epiphany during a flight to Japan. "I love old blues and slide guitar," said Mr. Malloy, kicking back at his house in Maui, Hawaii. "Halfway through the first track I teared up, was blown away. I passed the stuff around to everybody. Within six months, Ben was being surfed to."

For Mr. Malloy, Mr. Harper's fluidity matches a return to form in surfing, a move away from the manic energy that punk wrought on what Mr. Mal-loy considers a very artistic sport. He cites surf documentaries from the early 70's like the Australian films Morning of the Earth and Free Ride .

"When Hendrix was around," Mr. Malloy said, "his music seemed to coincide with the rhythms of surfing. But with the resurgence of style and grace from surfers like Rob Machado, my younger brother Dan and Kelly Slater, a gap existed. It wasn't working to watch these surfers ride to fast-paced music."

Mr. Harper, who "dreads" turning on pop radio, mentioned that he didn't want his music to be "geography specific." He acknowledged, though, that he grew up in the Inland Empire, between Los Angeles and the desert, and that he and Mr. Machado shared musical tastes. At least once, Mr. Harper hit haute-surf mode: "Music," he said, "is almost like air to me, an element. It's, like, fire, water, air and music."

Mr. Malloy, who says a Ben Harper concert within 100 miles of a coast now resembles "a surf event," finds this music key. "We spend eight months out of the year traveling the world. Then we have all this beautiful footage, and a lot of the music is what we need. You can sign autographs and jump on jets, but then you listen to Ben Harper. It brings you home. These days, that's really, really rare."

-James Hunter

Ani DiFranco, Righteous Babe

I am not an Ani DiFranco freak. In fact, I've always found her lame. But her new record, To the Teeth (Righteous Babe Re-cords), is excellent.

The opening song, the title cut, is old-style DiFranco- a strident response to high school shootouts: "Some boy gets the milkfed suburban blues/ reaches for the available arsenal … Women in the middle/ are learning what poor women have always known, that the edge is closer than you think/ when your men bring the guns home." I assume "poor" means economically disadvantaged as opposed to "poor poor pitiful me." The song's P.C. righteousness makes me want to force Ms. DiFranco to listen to Warren Zevon's ode to automatic weaponry "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" a couple of dozen times and then give her a monographed Glock. But after she gets the gunplay out of her system, the album cooks. Nonstop!

It contains half-a-dozen funk and Cassandra Wilson-style jazz tunes-three featuring James Brown alumni Maceo Parker on woodwinds. The rest of the cuts are unclassifiable in a Beckish way. "The Arrivals Gate"-concerning a joyous epiphany Ms. DiFranco had in an airport-contains the first successful high-tech banjo arrangement in history. "Freakshow" has Ms. DiFranco doing a damn good overdubbed imitation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Throughout the album, Kurt Swinghammer plays one, two, maybe three unique guitar solos. The record's biggest guest star is that hieroglyph guy. He duets with Ms. DiFranco on a quietly sinister song of regret called "Providence."

What's most impressive about the record is its self-confidence. Even elaborate multitracked songs sound relaxed. Ms. DiFranco matches Prince in throw-away virtuosity.

Ms. DiFranco also performs on His Purpleness' new album, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic , strumming an innocu-ous acoustic guitar on the rather silly proclamation, "I love you, but I don't trust you anymore." (Note: On the CD sleeve, the word "I" is replaced with a little Egyptian-style eyeball.) Well, Ms. DiFranco, hang out with Prince all you want. You can even change your name to a petroglyph. Just continue milking the brilliant energy of To the Teeth .

-David Bowman

In 1996, amid talk of girl power and waifdom, a tiny 18-year-oldsinger-songwriter-pianist named Fiona Apple made her debut with an album called Tidal . Although at first taken as a marketing team's capitalization on the Kate Moss moment, Ms. Apple soon revealed herself as a top-drawer popster; hit singles like "Criminal," which gave boy-girl relations a sexy jurisprudential spin, and "Sleep to Dream," with its wonderful pop adaptation of hip-hop rhythms, saw to that. But in no time, it seemed, Ms. Apple disappeared, heard from only on the Pleasantville soundtrack, where she delivered the Beatles' "Across the Universe" as a lucidly sensual art song.

Now she's back, with a fierce follow-up. Like so much about Ms. Apple, it looks fishy on paper–not least because the title, a rehearsal of Ms. Apple's own mantra, is 90 words long. Uncut, it reads: When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right .

Ms. Apple has not exactly expanded the scope of her interests; as on Tidal , these songs focus on romantic crises examined with a nearly morbid care. Ms. Apple, moreover, writes and sings in highly flown yet earthy ways, her alto seemingly caught inside a bluesy husk. Outbursts like "He don't give a shit about me" or "I'm full as a tick" pack a punch as calculated as they are effective. On When the Pawn , Ms. Apple more or less invents her own romantic fight game.

She and her producer, Jon Brion, whose work is dazzlingly fresh throughout the album, are in bravura control–from the musical arrangement to the dramatic delivery to the overall design and conception of Ms. Apple's 10-song suite.

Ms. Apple opens the album with "On the Bound," a midtempo piece in which she remains pessimistic and he–whose head she craves on her lap "one more time"–is all she needs. Mr. Brion orchestrates the tune with a Frankenstein lurch to the rhythms and a Carl Stalling lilt to the strange interpolations of levity that swing in. The song is not about Ms. Apple or her boyfriend, who you can't help thinking is a touch on the wolfish side; instead, it's a sonic explanation of the troubling world they think they inhabit. Next, the tempo speeds up, saws around, marginally brightens, as Ms. Apple asks for forgiveness for her "distance." A rhythmic and dynamic pressure point–an effective technique Ms. Apple and Mr. Brion repeat and refine in succeeding songs–occurs when, midsong, she takes off on the line "Now you have it, so baby tell me what's the word?" During such moments, no one in pop music seems to have more musical grip than Ms. Apple.

The record never stops. On "Love Ridden," as strings sting and caress, Ms. Apple observes that when she no longer calls someone baby, it can spell tragedy. On "Limp," personal rage unwinds exactly to thrilling rhythms. On "Fast as You Can," the music jumpcuts, and Ms. Apple, as her singing scats and deepens and then heightens again, earns the right to sing the words, "I'm blooming within." On "The Way Things Are," with a swayingly melodic chorus that could make it an enormous hit, Ms. Apple chooses to stay put: "So keep on calling me names," she sings, "keep on, keep on/ And I'll keep kicking the crap till it's gone."

Then there's "I Know," the most distinguished soul ballad in years. Calling herself a "crowbar," Ms. Apple offers: "And you can use my skin/ To bury your secrets in." She promises to wait by the backstage door. Then the album with the 90-word title ends.

–James Hunter

Sonic Youth's Millennial Boom

Sonic Youth–Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley–give this century a swell kiss-off with SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century . The group, formed in 1981, really is this century's "last" rock band–rock as in "electric guitar." The Youth's howling, dissonant, distorted guitar music has always begun at the point where Jimi Hendrix's feedback left off. Strangely enough, this is the group's most "traditional" work yet–a two-CD set of "covers" of this century's most notorious modern composers, from John Cage to Steve Reich to–say it isn't true–Yoko Ono. Her 1961 composition, "Voice Piece for Soprano," is "sung" by Ms. Gordon and Mr. Moore's 5-year-old daughter Coco, who hollers her head off for 12 seconds.

Sonic Youth also tackle minimalism with Steve Reich's 1968 composition, "Pendulum Music." In a 1999 reprint of William Duckworth's collection of conversations with experimental composers, Talking Music , Mr. Reich denies he's a minimalist. He claims the M-word is "more pejorative than descriptive …" Pejorative or not, "Pendulum Music" is a sadistically minimal duet between rhythmic feedback and what sounds like a hurt dog yelping. In another minimal tune, or meditative, to use a favorite buzzword of composer Pauline Oliveros, is the Youth's rendition of her "Six for New Time." The "song" sounds like horses rhythmically clomping over a wash of electronic static while Mr. Moore whispers, "The queen approaches the throne," and a crescendo of feedback begins.

How can you not be tongue-in-cheek describing pieces that are simultaneously nonsensical and profound? This duality is most evident in works by two composers who are covered more than once, Christian Wolff (two pieces) and Mr. Cage (three). Mr. Wolff was a progeny of Cage's when the former was just a squirt in junior high. It's hard to tell their work apart. There are no melodies. Guitars noodle. Percussion is beaten or tapped. There's much curious electric bleating. Some chimes. Attempts at hip-hop scratching. The longest piece, Cage's half-hour-long "Four6" is long enough that the noises become narration. Why bother with blotter acid? Drop a tab of Cage instead!

How much of this music is Cage's versus Sonic Youth's? Is the band even following a score? In his book, Mr. Duckworth discusses "classical notation" with Cage as they go over a Cage piece called "Atlas Eclipticalis." "Sometimes [notation] works and sometimes it doesn't," Mr. Cage says.

Now, I've seen the score to "Atlas Eclipticalis." I've even playedit. Back in the mid-1970's, my high school band took part in a John Cage festival at the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit. As I remember, Cage's score instructed me to stand anywhere in the auditorium I wanted and periodically blat my trombone. The other 85 musicians had similar freedom. Gradually during the hourlong performance, all of us abandoned the score and wandered around playing whatever we wanted. Some majorettes even streaked (70's lingo for running buck naked) across the stage wearing John Cage masks. The composer himself was in the audience. Did Cage jump from his chair and cry, "This is not the piece I wrote!"? No.

He sat, laughing his head off. Maybe there was Eastern mystical significance to this composition. Maybe it was fraudulent. But I will remember how invigorating that Cage-inspired chaos was until my grave (or Y2K). A similar sublime experience is found listening to much of Goodbye 20th Century . Kronos Quartet, roll over! Sonic Youth has stolen your cultural mantle.

–David Bowman

Patti Smith wallows in language. She chants. Rants. She loops incantations. The act of writing makes her kooky. "When I'm home writing on a typewriter," she said, "I go crazy. I move like a monkey. I've wet myself, I've come in my pants writing … I masturbate–14 times in a row." How many times did Victor Bockris and Roberta Bayley masturbate (separately or together) when they wrote this biography of Ms. Smith? As Mr. Bockris typed, "The way Patti recounts it, her childhood was really just a waiting period before she hit the big time," did he wiggle like a monkey? Did Ms. Bayley, reading over his shoulder, wet herself? Ms. Smith boasts about coming 12 times per day. "I can have a lot of brain travel through masturbation," she said. "That's where I get a lot [of] my mental images."

What are those mental images? Surely a kaleidoscope of hip or peculiar archetypes. Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley document how a teenage Patti Smith–a Jehovah's Witness misfit–first appropriated the magic of icons Jeanne Moreau and Joan of Arc to escape South Jersey and, eventually, to perch upon the highest pinnacle of New York hipsterdom.

In her writing, Ms. Smith often invokes the power of female icons: "Most of my poems are written to women because women are most inspiring. Who are most artists? Men. Who do they get inspired by? Women." Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley tell of Ms. Smith steamrolling male creativity into pancakes during the late 60's and early 70's. She was so powerful that after her affair with Robert Mapplethorpe, he went queer: "He collapsed, crying out dramatically that if Patti left him, he would become gay!" In 1969, Andy Warhol was so taken by Ms. Smith's role in the off-Broadway play Island, he came to almost every performance–yet she resisted becoming just another Factory freak. Instead, she burned through more men and eventually ended up as the adulterous lover of Sam Shepard in 1970, the two writing the play Cowboy Mouth "on the same typewriter–like a battle." A few years later, when she first saw Television perform at CBGB, she told the band's manager, Terry Ork, she wanted the guitarist, Tom Verlaine: "He has such a Egon Schiele look," she said. "You gotta get that boy for me." Mr. Ork obliged. She devoured poor Tom like candy and by 1974 had conquered the CBGB scene herself.

Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley have some inkling of the passionate depth of Ms. Smith's music. They quote Lee Black Childers saying, "I would sit open-mouthed on these rickety chairs in this club that stank and was in a dangerous neighborhood because Patti was doing astounding things–with cadence and rhythm and image. She was telling us rock 'n' roll in a different way, and we were astonished that all of New York wasn't already clamoring at her feet."

I remember seeing her do a set that segued from Smokey Robinson's "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" to her own insane Wilhelm Reich-returns-to-his-son-in-a-flying-saucer song, "Birdland"–both numbers sung in a slow Billie Holiday tempo. Ms. Smith yapped as if she'd just invented the idea of singing poetry. Who the hell is Bob Dylan ?

And speaking of Mr. Dylan–Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley suggest that he tried to appropriate this female upstart's poetic energy for his Rolling Thunder Revue, but she turned the bard down cold. "I thought [the offer] was real sweet of him," Ms. Smith said, "but … we're not chemically suited to be around each other–both of us have so much electrical energy we need some kind of calming factor. It's like if you have an electric chair, you need somebody to electrocute, you don't bring in another electric chair."

Even though the book is dashed together and Ms. Smith's story has been told before (in Patricia Morrisroe's Mapplethorpe: A Biography and in Legs McNeil's and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk , and in a competent earlier Patti Smith biography by Nick Johnstone), reading the first two-thirds of Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley's version is vaguely beach-book pleasurable. The biography takes a moral nose dive, however, when the authors report on their subject's Rimbaud-like rejection of poetry and success in 1980. Rather than go run guns in Ethiopia like Rimbaud, Ms. Smith ran Pampers and Tide in a middle-class backwater north of Detroit after marrying Fred (Sonic) Smith, former guitarist of the almost legendary rock group MC5.

The "party line" on the Smith-Smith marriage (as told in Nick Johnstone's biography) is that Patti joyfully morphed from Bob Dylan's metaphorical kid sister into June Cleaver. Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley don't buy it. The two biographers dig up a few sources like James Wolcott to state there was a "spooky vibe about Fred and Patti's relationship." Yet none of this alleged spookiness is observed firsthand. And Fred died of heart failure in 1994, so he's not around to defend himself. A responsible biography needs more proof of domestic violence than Mr. Wolcott's assertion that the Smith ménage gave him the willies.

Ms. Bayley is mostly known as a photographer of the punk era. Mr. Bockris has written a number of "internationally acclaimed stone classics"–authorized biographies of Warhol, Keith Richards and William Burroughs. But Warhol et al. cooperated with Mr. Bockris; Ms. Smith did not. And Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley punish her mightily for this.

After the death of her husband, and after the death less than two months later of her brother Todd, Ms. Smith took up with a boy named Oliver Ray who is not much older than her eldest son. Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley depict Ms. Smith as a woman who allowed her genius to be destroyed by male tyranny and who then ended up as a hag vampire, preying on youth. Weighing Ms. Smith's return to the stage in 1995, they speculate: "Was Fred's death the event that set Patti free, and her brother Todd's the catalyst that spurred her return, as the death of William Burroughs' wife had freed him to write?"

Stop. Stop. Stop. Patti Smith did not literally or figuratively fire a bullet into anyone's skull the way Burroughs did. The comparison is clumsy. Wrong. I once believed that if you're a rock star, you get the Victor Bockris you deserve, but Ms. Smith deserves better. I once heard her say, "Having a book is an honor, a privilege." This concept cannot ever have occurred to Mr. Bockris and Ms. Bayley. At the end of their work, they found no honor in Ms. Smith's story, no privilege in telling it.

Even worse, their language will make no one move like a monkey. Or come in their pants. So we'll just wait. Someday there will be a dynamite biography of Ms. Smith.

Hours … , David Bowie (Virgin/America).

Vagabond Ways , Marianne Faithfull (It Records/Virgin U.K.).

James Jewell Osterberg (Iggy Pop), David Robert Jones (David Bowie) and Marianne Faithfull (Marianne Faithfull) are all 53 years old. Each has just released a record that confronts the state commonly referred to as middle age. "It was the winter of my 50th year," begins Iggy Pop's Avenue B , "When it hit me–I was really alone and there wasn't a hell of a lot of time left."

This confession is immediately followed by Iggy Pop singing, in a song called "Nazi Girlfriend": "I want to fuck her on the floor/ Among my books of ancient lore." If the song were a Neanderthal electric-guitar number, it would refute Iggy Pop's newfound sincerity. Instead the song is played on an acoustic guitar. Iggy Pop even puckers up and whistles a quiet solo in the middle of the thing.

A gentler, wiser Iggy Pop is not an Iggy Pop gone soft. He still displays his washboard gut in publicity photos, although his skin looks old. Creepy. His voice remains quietly dangerous. A few of the songs are electric and fierce, reminding us of Iggy Pop's Stooges heritage. Most of the songs concern Iggy Pop's younger girlfriends, kids that speak French or Spanish. Yet in another recitation, Iggy Pop reveals that one actually called him "Daddy." He spits the word out in embarrassed disgust. His pathos is both chilling and touching. If this sincerity is just an act, it still works theatrically. By magnificently re-creating his "pop" persona, Iggy Pop has created a semi-masterpiece. I hedge only because once the power of this new "poignant" Iggy Pop becomes familiar, a few songs begin to seem slightly ho-hum. But that's O.K. The best way to appreciate this album is to play it late at night and then just pass out.

Now for the autumnal Mr. Bowie. Way back when, the man appropriated the raw power, dark eloquence and oblique recording strategies of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Brian Eno. Who is left to borrow from? Mr. Bowie's album Hours … reveals the man's lack of pockets to pick. The album's 10 songs–two more if you are willing to wait eight "hours" while the thing downloads from your modem–are radio-friendly pleasantries awash in retro-80's keyboards, "soul" background singers and a little electric guitar.

The songs' lyrics read like high-school verse. "All the clouds are made of glass," he observes in "What's Really Happening?" "And they're slowly sinking/ Falling like the shattered past." Wait. Another song, "Seven," goes like this: "I've got seven days to live my life/ Or seven ways to die." That means nothing. The album's handful of songs about a failed marriage fail even more. Banalities are repeated over and over: "I danced with you too long." Another time, "What's really happening? What tore us apart?" The only good line in the album (in "Survive") is, "You're the great mistake I never made." Should we praise him for it, or assume he swiped it from some 40's torch song, the way he stole his catchy "The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell" from Iggy Pop's "Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell"?

On Mr. Bowie's one great album, Hunky Dory , he sang, "I'm sinking in the quicksand of my thought/ And I ain't got the power any more" ("Quicksand"). David, you're still sinking. And you haven't had the power for years.

As scandalous as Mr. Bowie or Iggy Pop were in their prime, Ms. Faithfull beat them both with her wicked ways. The story of the cops busting a drug party and finding Ms. Faithfull sprawled naked on a rug while Mick Jagger ate a Mars bar is one of pop music's most enduring myths. (The Mars bar was placed between Ms. Faithfull's legs.) On the first and title song of Vagabond Ways , she sings, "I like to drink and take drugs/ I love sex, and I move around a lot." The next song is Roger Waters' "Incarceration of a Flower Child," a gaudy Pink Floydish number about a burnt-out hippie foreseeing: "Things will get cold in the 1970's." The next six cuts are less dramatic. They're lovely numbers concerning lost romance and middle-aged regret –many co-written by Ms. Faithfull herself, along with a cover of "For Wanting You," by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and "Marathon Kiss," which was written and produced by Daniel Lanois. Mr. Lanois' presence defines these songs. It's likely the producer of Vagabond Ways , Mark Howard, borrowed (or appropriated) Mr. Lanois' trademark high-tech, spacy vibe for all of them. What keeps the songs from going maudlin is Ms. Faithfull's cracking Cruella de Vil voice. "I was born like this," she sings in her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song." "I had no choice. I was born with the gift of a golden voice." She sings that verse without cracking up like Mr. Cohen did before her.

In the autumn of her career, Ms. Faithfull has made an album as culturally important as her 1979 "hit" Broken English , while being as musically satisfying as her best record up till now, Strange Weather (1987). Yet this CD is only available as an import. Americans, take to the streets.

The time: July 19, 1999 (the middle of the heat wave). The place: Tonic, a Norfolk Street beer joint. There, British guitarist-songwriter Richard Thompson and his small band performed a low-profile 7 P.M. showcase to promote his just-released album, Mock Tudor . Before the show, he chatted with a journalist and learned the man will review the record for this newspaper. Mr. Thompson reached for his wallet, saying, "How much you want?"

A bribe? Surely he jests! Mock Tudor is a superior album, even though it's–oh no!–a "concept" album, a song cycle about growing up in London's suburbs. Holy Thick as a Brick !

The first number is catchy rocker with harmonica (must be a first for Mr. Thompson) called "Cooksferry Queen." It's about a 60's London gangster who was transformed into a love child by LSD. The thug actually paraphrases Jefferson Airplane, singing, "She gave me one pill to get bigger/ Another pill to get small." Then the lad hallucinates familiar Thompson imagery of "snakes dancing all around my feet/ And dead men coming through the wall."

Mr. Thompson further explores London's underbelly in "Sights and Sounds of London Town," cataloguing his city's whores, losers and shakedown men as thoroughly as a musical Weegee. The best song, "Walking the Long Miles Home," is crime-free, however. It's about a bloke trudging home to North London in the middle of the night long after the Tube and buses have stopped running.

Mr. Thompson divides this concept album into three narrative groupings titled "Metroland," "Heroes in the Suburbs" and "Street Cries and Stage Whispers." But frankly, making sense of how the songs fit together is futile. Half could be set in Pittsburgh, or on a farm, or in a hospital. They concern the heart–which, if you're familiar with Mr. Thompson's lyrics, you know is always black. Titles like "Two-Faced Love," "Dry My Tears and Move On" and "Crawl Back (Under My Stone)" alert you not to play this album on Valentine's Day (shoot yourself instead). But Mr. Thompson's devoted following (are we a cult?) doesn't give a fig about his lyrics or his songwriting or his take on romance. It's his guitar–electric guitar. Ex-Husker Du guitarist Bob Mould calls Mr. Thompson "the master." In conversation last year, he said, "It's embarrassing. Some people inspire you to play, but I hear Richard and just want to quit. Forget the whole thing. It's just pointless."

Guitar solos seem passé right now, but it's surely a temporary condition. Ever since Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar in 1967, cycles of progressive rock, disco and sampling have given way to a reemergence of the pure electric howl of a Fender, Gibson or vintage Gretsch. For 30 years, Richard Thompson has been churning out solos on his magnificent Fender Stratocaster. Some last long. Some are only short flourishes. But they all sound unique to our American ears because Mr. Thompson's main influence is the Celtic blues, not the ones from the Mississippi Delta. The highlights of Mock Tudor are the solos, of course: a strident one in "Crawl Back (Under My Stone)," more delicate cascading in "Walking the Long Miles Home," then one so intense in "That's All, Amen, Close the Door" that you may grind your teeth down to the fillings.

Mock Tudor is that good. Yup. But it's also a failure. Inside that muggy little bunker on Norfolk Street, Mr. Thompson took the stage with drummer Michael Jerome, upright bass player Danny Thompson (no relation), and his son, Teddy Thompson (the

kid just signed as a solo artist with Virgin Records), on guitar and harmony, and ripped up and re-reinterpreted every Mock Tudor song. It was a performance so astonishing, so exciting, that one might very well remember it on one's deathbed. Mock Tudor is thus revealed to be yet another Richard Thompson record that doesn't even begin to approximate the power of his live performance. Mr. Thompson is damned (or is it blessed?) to be one of those performers more inspired on stage than in a studio.

That said, Mock Tudor is still the best sounding Thompson record in years. He demoted his longtime producer, Mitchell Froom, to keyboard duty, leaving production to replacement team Tom Roth-rock and Rob Schnapf (Foo Fighters, Beck). Like Mr. Froom, they let Mr. Thompson sneak in a hurdy-gurdy or two in the mix, but they didn't allow the purity of the bass-drums-guitar sound to get too cluttered with odds and ends and krumhorns. Mock Tudor is maybe the best Thompson record since Shoot Out the Lights , the legendary last record he made with his ex-wife, Linda, in 1982. The only one who doesn't agree that Shoot Out the Lights is a classic is Mr. Thompson himself.

"It's a crappy-sounding record," he remarked after the Tonic show. "The songs are good. But the drums are small. The performances sound a little lame."

Hey! What the hell does he know? He only made the thing. Besides, no one listens to a Richard Thompson record for the drums. Shoot Out the Lights remains the most "live" sounding album Mr. Thompson recorded. Of course, his wife's presence contributed greatly to its magnificence. She also made some of her husband's bleakest songs ("Did She Jump or Was She Pushed?") sound almost whimsical. But Mr. and Mrs. Thompson split up around the time Shoot Out the Lights was released. Twenty years later, Linda was stricken with a disease that left her physically unable to sing.

The grim qualities of Mr. Thompson's verse are a separate issue from the capturing of his guitar on wax, but it can't be overlooked. In Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human , he points out that the British audience in Shakespeare's time likely chuckled at Willie's on-stage violence because they were also fans of public executions (hangings, heads lopped off, folks drawn and quartered). Mr. Thompson seems to write for similar spectators. "I stole your wife–hope you don't mind," he sings in "Hope You Like the New Me." "She was looking bored, don't you think/ Soon have her back in the pink/ Stop by and see us–for tea." But remember, "Mack the Knife" is a pretty dry little number. Mr. Thompson excels in the black humor perfected by devils and Bertolt Brecht. Mock Tudor is grim, yes. But it sounds great. And Mr. Thompson will always play it even better on stage.

You and I supposedly have a baby squatting in our psyches. An "inner child." Maybe. But I believe most of us do possess an "inner Nixon." For those of us who were teenagers during Watergate and rebelling against our fathers, our "inner Nixon" is a Darth Vader-like figure–Nazi on the outside, but mashed up and pathetic beneath his helmet. As adults, we can now no more hate Nixon than we can our own screwed-up pops. I respect the validity of other inner Nixons. For example, I recently had the occasion to rhapsodize to Garry Wills (author of Nixon Agonistes ) over the goofy pathos in the "My mother was a saint" farewell speech that Nixon gave on that sad August morning so long ago when he flew away from the Presidency. Mr. Wills remained silent, then he mentioned how he and his wife had celebrated that day–"Nixon, good riddance." I realized Mr. Wills' inner Nixon was a hundred times more malevolent than mine.

This concept of an inner Nixon is no more absurd than Irwin F. Gellman's division of humanity into "Nixonphiles" and "Nixonphobes." Mr. Gellman correctly slots Mr. Wills in the later category, adding other Nixon biographers like Fawn M. Brodie ( Richard Nixon: The Shaping of his Character ) and Roger Morris ( Richard Milhous Nixon ). Nuts to you all! says Mr. Gellman, who claims that after he poured over private papers in National Archives files he discovered a Nixon "who almost always contradicted previous biographies." The Contender , the first volume of Mr. Gellman's proposed trilogy, begins pre-Pumpkin Papers and follows Nixon through his entanglement with Alger Hiss and up to his nomination as Ike's running mate. We take leave of Nixon several days before the Checkers speech–a bit of a letdown, like walking out of Eyes Wide Shut before the orgy scene. Still, it's enlightening to read about Nixon's Congressional career in a continuous narrative, with Alger Hiss as just one dramatic climax among many.

Mr. Gellman insists that we see Nixon in context. "To examine Nixon from his contemporaries' viewpoint is paramount," he writes–we should block out our post-Watergate hindsight. "Anti-communism was as American as apple pie in the late 1940's," he adds. Here are the specific historical corrections he makes: Nixon was not a congenital liar. During his first, 1946 Congressional race against Jerry Voorhis, Nixon supporters did not place hundreds of anonymous phone calls to voters, whispering, "Did you know Voorhis is a communist?" Whittaker Chambers was as red as Laurence Duggan (the guy who took a swan dive out of his office window at Christmastime, 1948, because Nixon leaked word that his name appeared on a list of Commie spies). Helen Gahagan Douglas lost to Nixon in 1950 because she really was a red dingbat (so much for Greg Mitchell's Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady ). In the end, Mr. Gellman only partly succeeds in rescuing Nixon from censorious historians. Nixon may really be clean after all on the Douglas affair, but The Contender unintentionally emphasizes the fact that even in the 40's, Nixon's contemporaries considered him as much of a sleaze as The Washington Post did in 1973.

Helen Gahagan Douglas bestowed the moniker "Tricky Dick" way back in 1950. (She also referred to Nixon as "pee wee.") Years before he typed up his 1970's enemies list, Jerry Voorhis observed: "Any critic of Nixon is labeled an enemy of the country." Even if Mr. Gellman's claim is true (and to me it seems backed by inconclusive research), that Nixon supporters did not after all make crank calls about his opponent in 1946, we all know about the skullduggery of Nixon supporters in 1972. Slander from the future didn't color Nixon's past–there's always been something creepy about him.

Near the beginning of the book, Mr. Gellman tells how, in 1947, Dick, Pat and daughter Tricia moved into an $80-per-month duplex in Park Fairfax, Va., while Nixon's mom and pop, Hannah and Frank, bought a nearby dairy farm. We learn, "Frank named the cows for movie stars like Loretta Young, Gary Cooper, and Dorothy Lamour." Loretta Young as a moo-cow? This is a charming throwaway in a book so eager to vindicate Nixon that it forgets to equip him with any charm. We get very few intimate glimpses of Nixon at work: hunched over a pumpkin, say, or studying the science of lie detector tests administered by Dr. Leonardo Keeler of Chicago. Other biographies slip in specific details of Nixon's history (his talents as a cardsharp, for example), but the only time Mr. Gellman's Nixon becomes a regular Joe is when the historian mentions Dick's family. The Nixons get their first television and Pat relates, "We fell for television too and the children are now watching it.… Tricia likes cowboys or horror stories so Julie has little chance." Nixon himself shines with Buster Keaton brilliance when he does a pratfall down icy steps in 1947–little Tricia in his arms–and splats on his back and elbows "saving his daughter from injury."

Maybe there wasn't anything particularly humanizing in Mr. Gellman's new National Archives papers. Or maybe he just followed his binary belief that you either hate Nixon or love him. Touchy-feely scenes would be wasted on Nixonphobes, redundant for Nixonphiles. Yet at the end of the book, you realize Mr. Gellman himself doesn't love Nixon. "Was [Nixon] a saint, as some of his staunchest defenders assert?" Mr. Gellman asks rhetorically. "Of course not." So what's Mr. Gellman after? I believe Mr. Gellman's inner Nixon is the Nixon who courted Pat in 1939, an episode mentioned briefly in The Contender , and at greater length in those numerous "false" biographies Mr. Gellman hates so. Pat–the story goes–refused to date Dick at first, but consented to let him drive her to L.A. to rendezvous with other men . Nixon had to cool his heels somewhere, then pick the girl up to drive her home. Dick went along with this humiliating arrangement–this pimping of the heart–because he knew in the end Pat would give in and marry him. Which she did. This Nixonian determination is what Mr. Gellman himself is acting out: If he patiently and steadfastly corrects misconceptions about Nixon's past, his effort will somehow whitewash Watergate.

The futility of Mr. Gellman's gesture makes The Contender unintentionally touching. But America is big enough for a thousand different Nixons–inner or otherwise. The real Nixon is dead, but in life he was one American who got exactly what he deserved, both good and bad. Instant karma.

Dose , Latin Playboys (Atlantic).

Soul Disguise , Cesar Rosas (Rykodisc).

Houndog , Houndog (Columbia Legacy).

This last year of the 20th century turns out to be the year of the wolf: Los Lobos. In the spring, that band from East Los Angeles released three offshoot records. This summer sees the debut of the ninth full-length Los Lobos album, This Time . It's a lively little meat 'n' potatoes (or, more accurately, chips 'n' salsa) collection of bluesy rockers. In no way does it resemble the psychedelic hoopla that frontman David Hildalgo and drummer Luis Perez–along with producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake–indulge in when they play as the Latin Playboys.

This Time 's most way-out cut is the title number–a slow swamp rocker with percussion that sounds like a dinosaur in the distance gulping water. The next one, "Oh Yeah," has Mr. Froom's trademark layered drum effect–as if that dinosaur was munching a stack of tostada shells. Thereafter, the record is straight rocanrol . The third track is a heavy-metal-ish thumper about a guy named Viking "with a scar where his heart should have been." Another is a working-class rant against "people in high places" ("High Places"). Later comes a heavy sax shuffle courtesy of Los Lobos saxman Steve Berlin ("Run Away With You"). "Some Say, Some Do" is a La Onda Chicana-style (Mexican political rock from the 60's) statement about hungry kids. This Time celebrates real life, not the Buñuelian Andalusian Dog space of their surreal 1992 masterpiece Kiko . Of course, This Time contains Spanish numbers–three of them. They sound fine, but aren't particularly integrated into the lineup. In the August Esquire , Mr. Perez stoically remarks that today's Chicano kids only dig "rap and hip-hop." If that's true, the Spanish songs are a reminder that Mexican-American culture is richer than that.

As for gringo ears, American cities with substantial Mexican-American populations such as Austin, Tex., and Los Angeles will hear nuances in the Spanish songs "Cumbia Raza," "Corazón" and "La Playa" that citizens of, say, Fargo, N.D., or Manhattan will miss. On the other hand, Texans will hear those songs with a differently ear than Californians. As Los Lobos guitarist-singer-songwriter Cesar Rosas remarks in last summer's issue of Sing Out! , "It's a whole different trip the way they feel about Mexican music down [in Texas]. California is a little more Americanized."

Although New Yorkers may not get the rich variety in Mexican music, even residents of Chelsea or Chinatown will hear that the Latin Playboys are steadily burning the weird juju out of Los Lobos' system. The Latin Playboys' self-titled debut in 1994 was a hoot, but this year's Dose is as overboard as the sounds of the Residents–the only group more whacked-out than them. In fact, outside of two rootsy rockers and a spoken-word piece about a kid driving with his folk to the movies to see "Ricardo Montalban and some hueras ," Dose 's other instrumental and vocal numbers actually mimic the Residents' cartoon sound. Come to think of it, the Residents have never been photographed without their giant eyeball masks. Does anyone really know what Messrs. Hildalgo, Perez, Froom and Blake do in their spare time?

We all know that Cesar Rosas makes straight no-nonsense barroom rock in his spare time. Mr. Rosas, if you need reminding, is the grumpy-looking Los Lobos player with the goatee. After listening to his first solo album, Soul Disguise , it's easy to imagine that he showed up at the This Time sessions and barked, "O.K., amigos. Enough with this freak music–let's just do rocanrol !" His Soul Disguise is pure cafes cantantes thump. On first listen, there's not much to say about songs like "Angelito," "Struck," "Treat Me Right" and "E. Los Ballad #13." They seem as unmemorable as Dose is ridiculous. Yet Mr. Rosas' straight-ahead songs sound better and better the closer to midnight or last call the clock gets.

Houndog , the record David Hidalgo recorded with Canned Heat's brief alumnus, Mike Halby, is even more toned down than Mr. Rosas' CD. Mr. Hidalgo and Mr. Halby overdubbed vocals, guitars, drums and violin–with Mr. Hidalgo as both the fiddler and the album's producer–to create a soundscape that is sparser than sparse. We never have to talk about Skip Spence again because Houndog may be the most satisfying minimalist album ever recorded. The backbone of most songs is just drums and bass, both instruments punched up without echo or reverb. It's like you're listening to Mr. Hidalgo and Mr. Halby play in some Quonset hut out in the Mojave. Mr. Halby sings most of the simple stark songs about there being "No chance/ No Chance/ No chance–for romance" or "All fired up–All shook down" or "Somebody's got to stop/ Somebody's got to stop the bleedin'" (respectively, "No Chance," "All Fired up, All Shook Down," "Somebody (Stop the Bleedin'"). Mr. Hildalgo's violin, not guitar, is the lead instrument. His violin is deliciously dour, never screechy. You know how a snake slithers? That's Hidalgo. As musically unadorned as Houndog is, it's the most modern-sounding record Los Lobos members have ever released.

Producer Mitchell Froom may be a master with his post- jipismo neo-psychedelic tricks, but this former porn-film composer doesn't have a clue about producing unadorned music. Mr. Hidalgo, on the other hand, can be as trippy as Mr. Froom, yet knows how to apply the principle, less is more. One is tempted to paraphrase President Porfirio Díaz's (1830-1915) lament about Mexico and the United States, Poor Los Lobos! So far from God, so close to Mitchell Froom.

But no, no, no. That's unfair. What if Los Lobos returns to that Kiko -ish rococo sound? Then Mr. Froom will be their man. Perhaps I was also unfair on Manhattan's gringo culture earlier. In mid-July, the papers reported that two Mexican gangs had a shootout in the subway. Mexican gangs in New York? Obviously, there is more Mexican culture in this city than meets the eye. What a gas if during that gunplay, the gang members had a boom box playing the title song on Los Lobos' 1988 folk album La Pistola y el Corazón , " Y aqui siempre paso la vida con/ La pistola y el corazón ." The English translation: "And here as always I spend my life/ With the pistol and the heart."

The pistol and the heart. I can't think of a more symbolic or more Mexican pairing of words to describe the beauty found in Los Lobos' music.

More Oar: A Tribute to the Alexander (Skip) Spence Album . Various artists. Birdman.

Jewels for Sophia . Robyn Hitchcock. Warner Brothers.

Moby Grape songwriter-guitarist Skip Spence's sole solo album, Oar , was recorded in December 1968 and released the next fall. Spence's next 30 years were spent doing time in mental hospitals and procreating–when he died of lung cancer last April he left behind four children and 11 grandchildren. Oar is his artistic legacy, a collection of brooding songs with minimal instrumentation (bass, drums, occasional guitar). It's one of those legendary albums more written about than listened to.

In the booklet that accompanies the Sundazed reissue, David Fricke stresses the album's low-fi ambiance, writing that Oar was recorded with so little treble "that Spence threatened to make his songs invisible." Several pages later, Jud Cost suggests that Oar 's quietness is Spence's repentance for his colorful breakdown during the summer of '68, when Moby Grape was in New York recording its second album and Spence was gobbling acid like M&Ms, not to mention consorting with a female Satanist who convinced him that Moby Grape's drummer Don Stevenson was a "snake" (as in reptile).

Mr. Stevenson recalls coming upon a roadie building a wooden box shaped like a coffin. It was. "I'm building your coffin, man," the roadie said. "Skippy told me to." Later, Spence chopped up Mr. Stevenson's door at the Albert Hotel with an ax.

The cops dragged Spence to Bellevue, where he wrote some songs. After his release, he convinced Columbia Records to buy him an Easy Rider chopper and a week of studio time in Nashville. That's where he made Oar .

This is the second reissue of Oar . The first one, put out by Sony in 1991,was a botched job. Sony remixed the original tapes, and Spence sounds like he's playing in a closet down the hall. This time, Sundazed Music has done a great and foolish thing with Oar . It's true to the original– Oar sounds clean and sparse, like Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding . Spence sounds like he is in your room, and you can even make out the lyrics. "A cripple on his death bed in a dream did rise," he sings in "Cripple Creek," a song that mines the same biblical cowboy territory of the "John Wesley Harding" songs themselves, with Spence's mentions of "streams of fire" and a "wheelchair spinning deeper in the mud."

Now for the foolish thing: Sony's Oar contained five bonus tracks, and the Sundazed Oar added five more, for a total of 10 bonus tracks. All of them were apparently recorded on the last day of the Oar sessions. More Spence is not necessarily better Spence.

The new tunes all spill from the "Afro" section of the vinyl version's 12th and last track, "Grey/Afro." The bonus tracks make for one continuous hypnotic rant. A first-time listener may want to hurl a shoe at the CD player just to turn the damn thing off.

But there's another way to appreciate Oar : More Oar , a tribute album in which 16 acts do Oar track by track.

Most "tribute albums" are a hodgepodge of unrelated singers that one rarely plays more than once or twice. (Remember the double album of Beatles covers, All This and World War Two , released in 1976? Case closed.) At first glance, More Oar seems to suffer from the usual lack of artistic continuity. Singers like Robert Plant, Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Waits and Beck have little in common. Yet most of the tribute musicians–Robert Plant in particular–duplicate Oar 's low-key artistry without being as quite as low-key as Spence himself.

Alejandro Escovedo sings "Diana" and makes the wispy melody stronger. The Ophelias ham up "Lawrence of Eurphoria"–and suddenly you realize what a hoot the song is. A few listens of More Oar will send you to the original album with pleasure.

Robyn Hitchcock's presence on More Oar ("Broken Heart") is a reminder of the British tradition of psychedelic breakdown that started with Syd Barrett. Not that Mr. Hitchcock has broken down (yet!). He's singled out because he released the first perfect tribute album a few years back–Mr. Hitchcock's complete duplication of the famous 1966 "Royal Albert Hall" concert by Bob Dylan and the Band, song by song. The Hitchcock tribute (which was only officially released as a promotion) points to a direction that tribute albums should take: one artist duplicating song by song a favorite album. Imagine Bob Mould doing Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights , song by song. Or Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo doing Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde . Who should do Mr. Hitchcock himself? Beck would be a good choice. And Mr. Hitchcock's new record, due out later this month, Jewels for Sophia , would be a wonderful album to duplicate. It's one of his best. Highlights include his chilly warning, "Time will destroy you like a Mexican god" ("Mexican God").

For some peculiar reason, Mr. Hitchcock set off to make Jewels for Sophia as deliberately unhomogenous as a tribute album. As he notes in a press release, he used "different combinations of people in various studios, all playing songs they had never heard before." Mr. Hitchcock recorded Jewels in Seattle, Los Angeles and London with four different producers (Peter Gerrald, Jon Brion, Charlie Francis and Pat Collier), but he might as well have ridden a chopper to Nashville and recorded Jewels in a week, as Spence did Oar . Jewels sounds that connected. No surprise.

Every Hitchcock record sounds more or less alike. That's not a putdown. Genius doesn't require variety–consider Johnny Cash. If Mr. Hitchcock had only produced a single solo record like Skip Spence did, critics would now be writing about the demented genius of Black Snake Diamond Role (1981).

Thankfully, he has given us a rich body of work. As for Skip Spence, one brilliant record from that ax wielding maniac is enough. Rest in peace.

Cold Hard Truth. George Jones. Asylum.

Townes Van Zandt cringed when Steve Earle called him the best songwriter in America, adding that he would shout it standing on "Bob Dylan's coffee table."

"I don't think Steve could get past Dylan's bodyguards," Van Zandt replied.

He knew of what he spoke. His widow, Jeanene Van Zandt, says her husband met Mr. Dylan once–at a toy store in Austin, Tex.; Mr. Dylan was surrounded by Snoopy dolls and bodyguards. At the time, Van Zandt was too loaded to do anything other than appreciate the ludicrousness of this meeting.

Loaded was Townes' usual state. He died of a heart attack on New Year's Day, 1997, not long after escaping a hospital to get a drink. Two and a half years later, here's the first major label posthumous release– A Far Cry From Dead (Arista). It's made up of old tunes Van Zandt re-recorded in a Nashville suburb in the early 90's. He was trying to dry out. Every day at dawn, he woke up and got to work, recording DAT's of his old songs and keeping himself away from the bottle.

Last year, Ms. Van Zandt took those DAT's into a studio in Nashville and added a band to his strumming. Why didn't she just release the DAT's as they were? "There are already live albums of Townes signing solo," she said in a phone interview. That's true, but who needs a tepid band version of his chestnut "Pancho and Lefty"? Or the man singing, "I got me a friend codeine, he's the nicest thing I've seen/ Together we're gonna wait around and die" as bland session players make some noise in the background, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Van Zandt is, despite the title of the album, dead as a mackerel.

Of the two new cuts, "Sanitarium Blues" could be the bleakest song he ever wrote: "They hose you down, make sure you're clean/ Wrap you up in hospital green/ Shoot you full of Thorazine …" The song's power overcomes his widow's unremarkable production. Unfortunately, her studio work jokes up the second new song, "Squash," a Charles Addams-like ditty about road kill ("Some armadillo done gone crazy/ Flew in front of a semi/ Man, looks like squash to me"). It ends up sounding like a white-trash cousin of Loudon Wainwright's "Dead Skunk."

Before this "manic-depressive" singer with "schizophrenic tendencies" (so said the obituary in The New York Times ) died, he apparently signed over the rights to his live performances to his road manager. In some of those shows, his was a kind of tortured artist act. At a 1996 show in Ann Arbor, Mich., he slumped at the edge of the stage, weeping, until someone led him away. Then headliner Guy Clark waltzed out and cracked, "Was Townes dark enough for you?"

Last year, his widow heard that yet another live album was forthcoming–this one outrageously titled Townes Van Zandt in Pain . She went out into the backyard and had a heart-to-heart with her dead husband. He told her, from the beyond, that the DAT's were her ticket. So she made this album.

Now, bad Townes is better than no Townes at all. But it's far better to listen to the great records he made while he was still alive … and drinking.

While the bottle killed Van Zandt, it could not do away with George Jones. Last spring, Mr. Jones was driving and listening to himself singing a song he had just recorded on his tape player when he crashed his sport utility vehicle. Thank God he survived. His new one, Cold Hard Truth (Asylum), is as glorious as a country record gets.

Although Mr. Jones didn't invent tears-in-your-beer music, he's the high priest of its platitudes. But this does not imply one needs to dumb down to appreciate George Jones any more than one has to get stupid to overlook the melodrama in opera.

In Cold Hard Truth , Mr. Jones, 67, presents half-a-dozen universal tragedies in which he loses his wife, his girlfriend, his money, his job and his soul. But don't worry. There are upbeat numbers as well. "Sinners & Saints" starts with a cadence reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues"–only Mr. Jones sings: "Johnny's in the jail house sleepin' it off …"

Johnny had too much to drink, but Cold Hard Truth has no to-die-for alcoholic classic like "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)." There's a classic line in that song that has the singer sitting in his car in the middle of the night. He leans his head on the wheel "and the horn begins honkin'/The whole neighborhood knows that I'm home drunk again." That echoes the fact that a pint of vodka was found in his car the night he crashed. Mr. Jones claims he only lost control of the wheel because he got too excited listening to his new song, "Choices," which contains the lines, "I was tempted at an early age/ I found I liked drinkin'/ Oh! I never turned it down."

Whether or not George is "turning it down" now, he is the only Nashville singer who can turn 10 pretty good songs into a magnificent album like Cold Hard Truth .

"Popstar" is the opening track of the eighth Pretenders album, ¡ Viva el Amor! It is not only the best Pretenders music since the group's career peaked with Learning to Crawl in 1984, but it is also the summer's most marvelous straight-ahead pop album. Every fast song is radio-friendly, with hooks and jangly guitars. A few of the slow love songs even have discreet orchestras on them. Yes, strings! Ms. Hynde might as well have covered "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" and called Carly her sister, instead of decking her.

As violent as Ms. Hynde can be, we always knew this public tough cookie's heart was as gooey as, say, Kylie Minogue's. Even though Ms. Hynde was arrested in 1980 for punching the owner of a Memphis night club, surely that night in her jail cell she lay on her bunk dreaming of her man ("I Go to Sleep"). Ms. Hyde can be cantankerous-whether giving diatribes from the stage against flash cameras or trying to marry former pop star Ray Davies in 1982 and getting turned away by the registrar because they were arguing too loudly-but ever since the release of her 1987 cover of the Persuasions' "Thin Line Between Love and Hate," we've known that, if her knuckles were ever tattooed like Robert Mitchum's in Night of the Hunter , she'd have L-O-V-E written on both hands. Now on ¡Viva el Amor! , she finally reveals herself completely, singing, "I'm not made of brick/ I'm not made of stone/ I had you fooled enough to take me on." Some of us, she fooled. Others saw Ms. Hynde as the kind of girl only tough enough to get a tougher boyfriend. Indeed, the two most tender love songs on ¡Viva el Amor! , are directed at a samurai and a biker (respectively, "Samurai" and "Biker"). But the songs are not rockers. They're syrupy sweet. By the sound of them, you'd think she longs for Nick Drake, not Toshiro Mifune ( The Seven Samurai , Yojimbo , etc.) or Sonny Berger (Hell's Angels).

Not that Ms. Hynde doesn't have a temper. In "Nails in the Road," she warns "My patience has worn thin/ My tires are gonna explode." In "Baby's Breath," she chides her pretty-boy lover to take back his roses and save them for a funeral because "Your love is only baby's breath." What a devastating putdown. Ms. Hynde probably got the "roses at a funeral" line right because she-sadly enough-has had firsthand experience at various memorial services. Back during the height of the Pretenders' popularity in the early 80's, both her bass player Pete Farndon and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of Doctor White and junk (1982 and 1983). Many years and band members later, one is tempted to ask, "Why are the Pretenders the Pretenders, as opposed to just being Ms. Hynde's backing band?" Ms. Hynde has always insisted in interviews that she is not interested in being a solo artist. She needs the musical camaraderie.

This incarnation of the Pretenders on ¡Viva el Amor! is Martin Chambers, the original drummer, along with guitarist Adam Seymour and Andy Hobson on bass-those last two joining the group on Last of the Independents in 1994. The boys sound tight; the Pretenders are to Chrissie Hynde what Wings once was to Paul McCartney, just a tight pop backup to the singer. I use the word "just," because it's not like Adam Seymour will ever start jamming while Andy Hobson decides to pluck a sitar like Brian Jones. As in most pop music, the sonic unity of the sound is achieved mostly by production. My prejudice is toward a Neil Young stark 3-in-the-morning kind of sound, but the two producers of ¡Viva el Amor! , Stephen Hague and Stephen Street, give the album a unified radio-friendly shimmer, the kind of thing you get from Sting or Heart.

The real triumph of the album is not the production or songs, but Ms. Hynde's voice. It has never sounded better. She has finally, finally, finally gotten rid of that exaggerated vibrato. She now uses that technique only to delicately color the sound. Her voice can also whoop and tremolo. On "One More Time," it does so many acrobatic flips on a song so majestic and sweet, that the tune should replace "Stairway to Heaven" as the premier prom number.

On that note, let's declare ¡Viva el Amor! the record of the summer. It should play in every car tooling out to Jones Beach or the Hamptons.

In regard to her own successes, in a recent issue of Uncut , the singer says, "I read stories about girls who say they fucked their way to the top. Man, if only it was that easy." Yes! If only it was. Instead, Ms. Hynde has had to fight like a female palooka from Fez to Memphis. We say to the singer, "Punch their lights out, Chrissie. Knock 'em dead."