FEBRUARY 8, 1999: 

** The Neville Brothers

VALENCE STREET

(Columbia)

Seven ballads on a 12-song album is too many, especially when a couple are flat-out weak and others are oddly arranged -- notably Cyril's "Utterly Beloved," done as late-'70s leisure-suit soul. Their collaboration with Wyclef Jean, "Mona Lisa," is pointlessly repeated from Jean's year-old Carnival album, and its light trip-hop groove doesn't fit here. Charles's token jazz instrumental is placed too early in the disc. And Art's deep voice is a mismatch for Richard Thompson's "Dimming of the Day," which should have gone to Aaron. Only three of the remaining tracks qualify as vintage Nevilles: "Give Me a Reason" is a solid if typical Aaron ballad, and "Over Africa" and Art's Meters-style "Real Funk" both feature the New Orleans second-line rhythms sorely missing from the rest of the disc. But even these songs feel like previews of solo projects rather than integral parts of a unified statement. And nothing here comes close to reaching the peaks of their live shows.

*** The Jimmy Rogers All-Stars

BLUES BLUES BLUES

(Atlantic)

So here's a nice surprise and a fitting tribute to the Chicago blues linchpin Jimmy Rogers, perhaps the most underrated genius of the idiom. Rogers, who died last year, just as this album was being completed, authored dozens of classics (including "Sweet Home Chicago"), and he taught Muddy Waters the tricks of mastering electric guitar. He still sounds terrific here, his voice outdistancing partners like Eric Clapton and Jeff Healy, even fellow blues legend Lowell Fulson, in character and strength. His playing's perfect as a hot night over cold beers at the Windy City's famed Checkerboard Lounge. The surprise is that guests from Jimmy Page to Mick Jagger (singing better than he has on any Stones album in years) -- as well as respected bluesmen Carey Bell and Kim Wilson (both on harmonica) Johnnie Johnson (piano), Ted Harvey (drums), and Jimmy D. Lane (Rogers's hotshot guitarist son) -- all play by Rogers's basic blues rules. And they all sound so good. The only clam is Robert Plant's vocal ad-libs over "Gonna Shoot You Right Down," which trip into campy Zeppelin-isms mighty quick.

*** The Hope Blister

. . . SMILE'S OK

(4AD/Mammoth)

***

SB1: A SKIBOARDING JOURNEY

(Overall Entertainment/Rhino)

The weirdest thing about this CD, aside from the image of Master P riding a chair lift, is "Set It," an improbably good B-side from G-funk woulda-been Kurupt. There's also a Hieroglyphics posse cut ("The Who," from their not-exactly-overwhelming comeback album, 3rd Eye Vision), the Beatnuts' sharp, criminal-minded "Do You Believe," and NOFX's affectionately misanthropic "Liza." Even when the disc finds a common thread between rap and rock, it's still a study in contrasts: Mo' Thugs' "Mighty Mighty Warrior" suggests Christian soldiers trying to ward off Judgment Day by rhyming faster than the speed of sound; Sublime's almost-hip-hop "Superstar Punami" suggests the kind of groupie-nailing anthems Brad Nowell would have written had he lived to reap Sublime's rewards. Still, SB1 seems far more worthwhile than the sport it's meant to commemorate, a crackpot hybrid of skiing and snowboarding apparently invented to give "aggressive" in-line skaters someone to laugh at.

*** P.J. Olsson

(Red Ink)

**1/2 Leon Russell

FACE IN THE CROWD

(Sagestone)

Still, there's no denying Russell's chops. His New Orleans-style piano playing, for which he's justly famous, remains as sprightly as ever, and so do his lesser-known guitar skills. His Albert King-influenced leads are subtle and stinging. Plus, in such jazz-inflected originals as "This Heart of Mine" and "Blue Eyes & a Black Heart," he offers a tantalizing hint of his next project, a collection of standards that's likely to rival Willie Nelson's covers in interpretive idiosyncrasy. The old mountebank has a few tricks left up his sleeve.

** Keith Murray

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL THING

(Jive)

For starters, his modest flow is constricted by his major ignorance. Years ago Spin magazine praised the Long Island rapper's skill at "deconstruction," but when he thinks that being "homophobic" is something to boast about, or when he describes a judge's closing a case with the pronouncement "This court is now in session," his polysyllabic rhymes clunk like the malapropisms of the "Keith B. Real" clown on the last Will Smith album. And when Murray starts dropping references to his impending three-year sentence for second-degree assault -- which obviously rushed the making of this third solo album -- his material quickly disintegrates (like so many other felons') from bad-ass boasts to frightened, confused pleas for compassion.

I do love the way arch-enemies L.L. Cool J and Canibus guest-star on two fine back-to-back tracks. "Radio" really does have some skunky-funky-illest-funk flow. And producer Eric Sermon provides his usual simple, solid groove throughout. But in the end, it's all shut down with the real-life consequences of one genuinely "Bad Day."

**1/2 Chuck E. Weiss

EXTREMELY COOL

(Slow River/Rykodisc)

But Chuck E.'s for real, and his range goes from Bubber Miley-era Duke to Cajun to retro-rock to nasty-sounding blues. The best bits, or the strangest anyway, are the incantatory nonsense songs like "Pygmy Fund" and "Do You Know What I Idi Amin," the latter with Waits and with the goofiness quotient hitting the delirium level. Unlike Waits's stuff, though, Weiss's doesn't stick to the ribs. It's not so much extremely cool as extremely off-the-cuff (same difference?), fun but rarely inspired.

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