Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 66

IGOIMUStCI RECORDINGS ON REVIEW Excellent Good Fair Poor Marlah Carey MUSIC BOX Columbia To hear an excerpt from this recording, call 464636 and enter 2550 Peter Delano PETER DELANO Verve To hear an excerpt from this recording, call 463-4636 and enter 2554 Iariah Carey opens her third full-length release, Music Tears For Fears ELEMENTAL Mercury To hear an excerpt from this recording, call 463-4636 and enter 2553 One down, one to go. For those who thought Curt Smith's 1991 exit from Anglo-pop band Tears for Fears would leave The Seeds of Love (1989) as its swan song, think again. Smith's bandmate, the guy with the hard-to-pronounce surname, Roland Orzabal, is back with the Tears for Fears moniker and a new album, Elemental. The record's problem lies in its lack of an elemental change of pace; it's boring. The opening title track, with its ambient undercurrents, still fails to hit home like earlier material (i.e.

The Hurting and Mad World). Fish Out of Water is grounded in the Janovian psycho-babble Tears for Fears was founded upon and what the band's first two albums were weighed down with: "We used to sit and talk about primal scream To exorcise our past was our adolescent dream." There is something missing from Elemental. Whether it be just Smith or something that was lost in all the months of post-production work (the album was recorded last year), Orzabal couldn't pull off whatever grand idea he had at album's start. It's been done before, only The Juliana Hatfield Three BECOME WHAT YOU ARE AtlanticMammoth To hear an excerpt from this recording, call '463-4636 and enter 2551 Juliana Hatfield is like a demure-looking kitten who bares its claws when you draw too close. With her delicate, little girl-like vocals, the former Blake Babies singer gently greets the ear on her second solo effort, Become What You Are and quickly lashes out at the listener with her biting lyrics and slashing guitar.

"I hate my sister She's such a bitch," Hatfield sings on the modem rock hit, My Sister, setting sibling rivalry to jagged electric arpeggios and wavering between jealousy and admiration before admitting: "I love my sister." The real irony here is that Hatfield doesn't actually have a sister, in contrast to the true-life confessional nature of her previous recordings. On Become What You Are she reveals less of who she is, declaring: "Never let them see you sweaty Little pieces all they get." Unlike her 1992 solo debut, Hey Babe, which featured a revolving roster of guest musicians, Hatfield has teamed with bassist Dean Fisher and drummer Todd Phillips to form a power trio. This limited approach occasionally lends an air of sameness to the album, but ultimately fuels her fiercely deceptive alternative pop. The O'Jays HE LOVES YOU EMI To hear an excerpt from this recording, call 463-4636 and enter 2552 There are certain constants in this life. The sun will rise.

Leaves will turn colors in September. The OJays Eddie Levert, Walter Williams and Dwain Mitchell will expend every ounce of energy they have and a little more to produce an album. That is certainly the case with their latest work, a collection of just plain down-home, round-the-way, gut-busting, soulful rhythm and blues tunes made special by unusual harmony. The O'Jays' sound used to be basically Eddie Levert belting his heart out while the other two guys supplied background. But on this album, produced and arranged mostly by the group at Palace Recording Studio in Cleveland, harmony, not Eddie, is dominant.

The work's best cut, a high-energy ballad titled Somebody Else Will, was written by Eddie's son Gerald, of Levert fame, and Edwin Nicholas. But this group is about vibrant ballads, which it scores with on the last three cuts, especially No Can Do and Heartbreaker. He Loves You, the final cut, is a fitting religious sign-off from a group that does not waste any of its gifts. Box, with one of those impossibly high-pitched notes that only dogs can fully hear, which has become something of her trademark. Remarkably, however, the 23-year-old pop diva holds the reins on her expansive vocal range over the rest of the album.

Carey's voice still soars, but generally well below the stratosphere. I Her restraint makes Music Box a welcome change, although, as the title suggests, she's still singing the same old tune. Heavily synthesized, overly emotive ballads such as Never Forget You and Just to Hold You Once Again aren't anything we haven't heard before on Carey's albums as well as those by Whitney Houston. She even attempts an Will Always Love Vou-like knock-off with All I Ever Wanted. Two snappy dance tracks written and produced by Robert Clivilles and David Cole, Now That I Know and I've Been Thinking About You, are far more vibrant and original.

The album's high point (no pun intended) is an impassioned, yet understated cover of Nilsson's Without You, which proves Carey can handle a vocal showcase without showboating. Just when I thought the major labels had run out of jazz prodigies, Verve releases the self-titled debut of pianist Peter Delano, who turns 17 at the end of this month. (Someday soon expect to see a toddler in diapers grace a record jacket "he walks, he talks, he plays like Skepticism aside, Delano is ah enormous talent, even if the most vital playing on the album comes from the stellar supporting cast, including saxophonists Gary Bartz and Michael Brecker, and trumpeter and Dayton native Tim Hagans. I've heard kids sail through Charlie Parker tunes before, but I've never heard someone as young as Delano so comfortable with the post-bop vocabulary of McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock. Chromatic harmony, penta-tonic scales, pedal points, modal structures he covers it all.

Most of the tunes are Delano originals and that, too, is unusual. I can't overlook that his playing is derivative, that his ideas often sound forced and rather stiff, and that his sense of dynamics, texture and color are limited. But if Delano continues to improve at his present rate, hell be an absolute monster by the time he's old enough to vote. MARK STRYKER, Arts Critic DAVE LARSEN, Pop Music Critic DAVE LARSEN, Pop Music Critic GREG SIMMS, Dayton Daily News KEVIN AMORIM, Dayton Daily News SOLO PIANO CONCERT THE SUMMER SHOW TRIBUTE TO BALANCHINE Featuring PRINCIPAL DANCERS of New York City Billet Company of 30 Millett Hall Sunday September 19. 1993 DAYTON Memorial Hall GRAND OPENING OF PERSEPOLIS ORIENTAL RUGS CLEAN, REPAIR, APPRAISE BUY 61 31 FAR HILLS WASHINGTON SQ.

PLAZA, DAYTON, OH 45459 TEL. FAX (513) 438-1 177 Saturday, September 11 8:00 $17.50 $15.50 Reserved (limited $24.50 Golden Circle) at Memorial Hall Box Office Ticketmaster. Charge By Phone 513-225-5949 or 513-228-2323. Alto appearing in: COLUMBUS Palace Theatre 8:00 PM sponsored by OCJOI 10110 Friday, September 17 pm Reserved tickets at Ohio Palace Theatre Ticket Offices Ticketmaster. Charge By Phone 614-431-3600.

nit, pmraubo nifcuii by Cohmtna Anita. MM by Nw Yon Oty Raltci Shriver Center Box Office opens Monday. September 13. 1993 1 1 AM -4PM. (5 1 3) 529-3200 Willi the aippot of Iht Ofiio 4U poind).