The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 78

TRIUMPH THUNDER SEVEN MCA (p) this the band's seventh album. Triumph aspires to a musical sophistication and versatility beyond its brute hard rock image. Scattered VARIETY OF TRIUMPHLUSHNESS OF AZTEC KEENE'S IN-BETWEENBRUCH'S OTHER WORK 7 among the standard rock anthems and swaggering pyrotechnics are surprises such as the delicate acoustic guitar instrumental "Midsummer's Daydream" and the Jeff Beck-ish instrumental "Little Boy Blues." The brief "Time Canon" even attempts a madrigal-style round before giving way to the more conventional guitar-driven pomp of "Killing Time." Yet, despite these divergences. Triumph continues to be a band which banks its success on the more visceral attractions of mortar-attack drumming, high-voltage guitar work and primal wailing. Evidence as such the relentless power-chording of "Spellbound," the blistering guitar solo on "Time Goes By" and the Zepplinesque "Cool Down." Though the band opts to concentrate more on musical virtuosity and production quality than on originality, "Thunder Seven" provides Just enough variety to keep things interesting.

Tom LeCompte acoustic music with crossover appeal to folk, jazz and classical audiences, but it also has the Gaelic flavor provided by Mi-cheal Domhnaill. Best known for his work in the Irish Bothy Band and with traditional fiddler Kevin Burke, he has teamed up here with American violin and viola player Billy Oskay. It is in the themes he plays on whistle and harmonium that the mournful Irish quality comes out most, particularly in "The Cricket's Wicket." The album flows like one continuous piece, with repeated descending lines on piano and guitar playing the backdrop to improvised violin and viola parts. Split evenly between Oskay and Domhnaill compositions, the former's classical background and the latter's Irish roots are distributed throughout giving the album its uniform quality. Andy Nagy DOC MERLE WATSON DOWN SOUTH SUGAR HILL This is the Watsons' return to the pure mountain sound of the Carter Family and the Delmore Brothers and is their best record since the '60s.

Doc keeps his guitar generally In the background and concentrates on his singing, proving that he is the king of old-time country soul. Merle plays guitar, slide guitar and banjo with expertise that accents rather than over-ornaments the material. Doc's unaccompanied harmonica and vocal on "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" are as moving as anything he has recorded. His singing and Merle's outstanding fin-gerpicking on "Slidin' Delta" are as good as Mississippi John Hurt's original. The songs are classics like A.

P. Carter's "Solid Gone" and "Hello Stranger," "Cotton-Eyed Joe" and a ragtimey "Hesitation -in vo i i hi. BAILEY on the ball ADAMS on the border TOMMY KEENE BACK AGAIN (TRY. .) DOLPHIN This four-song EP is an interim release for veteran Washington D.C. pop-meister Tommy Keene, filling time and getting Keene a little press before the springtime arrival of a new full-length album.

Unlike most between-album releases, this isn't merely a collector's item for diehard fans or an introductory sampler for Keene's intelligent, hook-laden rock. Recorded at the Rat last summer. Blues;" as well as less familiar gems like BRYAN ADAMS RECKLESS This album is the epitome of formula pop rock. It is also a tawdry disappointment. In Adams' last album, the masterful "Cuts Like a Knife," the raspy-voiced Canadian seemed capable of great songs with meaningful lyrics.

On this one, the lyrics on songs like "Run to You" and "Somebody" are borderline at best. Meanwhile, "Heaven" is a slick ballad, an old song resurrected from an unsuccessful movie soundtrack. But be thankful it's here, because the album is all down hill after that. Adams sounds like a barroom version of John Cougar Mel-lenkamp on "She's Only Happy When She's Dancing," while "Summer of '69" is laughable considering Adams was 8 years old in '69. Yet he persists in singing about drive-ins and friends getting married during the best year of his life.

Then there is the juvenile "Kids Wanna Rock," a thumping clunker, one of the least intelligible songs of recent memory. We've come to expect a whole lot more from Bryan Adams. Kevin Connal The Hobo, a humorous view of life on the bum. This is about a good as old-time music gets. Elijah Wald LEIPZIG GEWHANDAUS ORCHESTRA MAX BRUCH: Second Symphony, Swedish Dances PHILIPS the two live cuts rousing covers of Bry an Ferry's "All I Want Is You and the Stones' "When the Whip Comes Down" reveal Keene and band as adept with hard-chargin' rockers as with slower-paced, more melodic Keene originals.

Pre A A ax Bruch is today a one-work composer. His G-Mi- viously unreleased is Sate in the Light, a pretty, melancholy ballad. The title nor Violin Concerto turns i 1 up on Pops programs and KJ occasionally during the track rates with Keene's best, bittersweet lyrics with a buoyant, captivating LEROY JENKINS' STING URBAN BLUES BLACK SAINT Leroy Jenkins, a venerable master and musical Iconoclast, has assumed another atavar. One of the founding fathers of free style jazz, and an important innovator and influence for as long as we can remember, Jenkins has gathered five young musicians to form what he calls his "electric-type group, so I could feel part of this time." Of course, he has superimposed his own ideas of order and chaos. His two guitarists play trombone and trumpet parts and he has added a vocalistviolinist, drummer and bassist.

His music and his own soaring violin are often wildly visual. On "O.W. Frederick," he plays a repeated railroad shuffle, fast then slow, with episodes of hallucinatory jubilation ending in shuffling rhythms and finally a pandemonium of voices. On "No Banks River," vocalist Terry Jenoure sings a series of odd high-pitched phrases in a blues that threatens to fly apart until you discover a subtle inner cohesion here. A stimulating workout by the guru.

Ray Murphy SHALAMAR HEARTBREAK SOLAR Shalamar is a thoroughly modern trio firmly entrenched in the crossover camp which houses pop-soul, punk-funk and look-good, sound-good devotees. Shalamar is a mercurial outfit featuring mainstay Howard Hewett, fellow vocalist Delisa Davis and guitarist Micki Free which delivers winning, lightweight dan-ceable songs. The band has scored on the charts with "The Second Time Around," "Dead Giveaway" and "Dancin' In the singalong chorus. David Wykqff PHILIP BAILEY CHINESE WALL COLUMBIA It was a canny move for Philip Bailey, a lead singer with Earth, Wind and Fire whose status there is unsettled at present, to team up yiith Phil Collins, the drummer and vocalist with Genesis who has employed the horns on his soul-inflected solo records. Philip and Phil's duet on the catchy "Easy Lover" landed on rock playlists, where Collins is no stranger.

The rest of Bailey's funky but sleek second album is enhanced by Collins' patented big drum-sound. Yet those familiar with Bailey's strong falsetto- vocals on "Reasons," and "That's the Way of the World" will quickly warm to the 10 seamlessly crafted songs here, highlighted by the fetch subscription season. But In an earlier day more of his works were popular -back when there were contraltos, they favored an aria from his "Ulysses," and it figured in the first programs of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Now Kurt Masur has resurrected Bruch's Second Symphony, a work that was never popular, even in Bruch's own time, because the form of the symphony. In only three movements, was unconventional, and because its mood, particularly at the beginning, was excessively gloomy.

But what might once have seemed a drawback can now appear an attraction. The symphony Is of considerable formal interest, and the dark mood is one we can respond to and In any case, it Is not long-lived. In a time when it Is difficult to work up enthusiasm In orchestras and in audiences for yet another performance of one of the standard romantic symphonies, the Bruch comes as a welcome novelty. Masur fills out the record with six "Swedish Dances" which Bruch orchestrated at the request of the Vienna Philharmonic. These are short and have a touch of Nordic melancholy.

In 1870. the Gewandhaus was the second orchestra to play Bruch's Symphony; It still boasts a wonderful, dark sound (those clarinets!) that is particularly appropriate to this music, and Masur is its a per AZTEC CAMERA KNIFE SIRE Roddy Frame is a young songwriter with an impressive command of his craft. The leader of this Scottish quartet has a winning way with gentle, urbane ballads and uptempo, ingratiatingly cheerful outings. Frame's songs are un- failingly melodic, wrapped in lush ar-I rangements (guided by Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler as producer), with guitar. bass and drums augmented by occasion-i al keyboards and horns.

Frame is a facile i lyricist but the sensuous pleasure of the i august music draws attention to his warm vocals and the band's sturdy con-i tributions. But Frame's most inspired I moment Is on the B-side of "All 1 Need Is Everything." the album's single. It's a I "Loaded Version" of Van Halen's "Jump." which unites the laconic verve of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane" with Frame's ironic, deadpan reading of the recent megahit. It's the unlikely pop transformation of the year (along with Husker Du's blistering "Eight Miles Lou Papineau yjf Sheets" (from the "Footloose" sounds ing opener "Photogenic Memory," the at mospheric Walking On the Chinese Wall and the forceful Time Is a Worn an." This is a likable, undemanding al bum of lively uptempo struts and warm ballads. Lou Papineau track, also included on this album); its stylistic blend is comparable to the genre-hopping of Prince, the Pointer Sisters and other popular acts, especially the lead-off track "Amnesia" and the title cut.

Though there is a bit of mild social commentary here on "Don't Get Stopped In Beverly Hills," most of the material addresses the ups and downs of love with a synth-beat laying the groundwork for the breezy tales. f. Lou Papineau MICHEAL DOMHNAILL BILLY OSKAY NIGHTNOISE WINDHAM HILL This album is firmly in the Windham suasive and committed advocate. f.M..t 41 i i 1 1. 'frfT framework of gentle, easy flowing -Richard Dyer vtv v' I rr Willi a -'j -if..