Pop Records

Even some Australians agree that Melbourne lies somewhere "behind the black stump" or, in current American, that it is a district of Squaresville. But Melbourne has its hipsters too, most notably a curvy, carrot-haired former choir singer named Diana Trask. Promoted from choir to nightclubs, Diana used to do Waltzing Matilda for visiting Americans. Discovered by Frank Sinatra and soon signed up by Columbia Records in New York, she has cut a series of briskly selling singles: Matilda, Long Ago Last Summer, Our Language of Love, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. Now, with her first album, titled Diana Trask, she is beginning to strike the trade as pretty fair dinkum.

The voice is considerably more seasoned than the career. Although its owner is barely 20, it has a comfortably upholstered sound and is used with discretion. To put new juice into jaded numbers, Songstress Trask has a habit of singing tantalizingly off pitch for a number of bars, or of interjecting a caressing wobble, or of suddenly, with a crack of her high-heeled foot, breaking and reshaping the beat. The image goes with the voice: in her nightclub appearances she frequently appears in a skintight, flesh-colored satin skirt and turquoise sweater with matching eyelids, and bumps and swivels her way through a repertory that is by turns sexy, solicitous, folksy and dramatic. There is not a mingy number in the lot.

Other pop records:

Circulate (Neil Sedaka; RCA Victor). A first album by one of the more promising talents to emerge from the pop thickets in recent years. Singer Sedaka mercifully prefers his songs ungimmicked. and he gives a fine, fresh gloss to numbers such as All the Way, We Kiss in a Shadow, Everything Happens to Me. A songwriter as well as performer, Sedaka contributes a ballad with a better-than-average literacy count: I Found My World in You.

Wonderland by Night (Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra; Dacca). An import from Germany that rocks on its mistily melodic way like an old-fashioned excursion steamer. The orchestra is expert, the vintage Prom Trotter '35.

Tour de Chant (Michel Louvain; Coral). A French-Canadian singer with a voice full of sighs, swoops and quavers his way through a pleasantly relaxed nightclub turn. Most of the songs will be new to U.S. listeners, but every so often Louvain slips in an oldie, e.g., C'est le Print emps (It Might as Well Be Spring] or Viens Plus Pres (Mama, Teach Me to Dance).

Will You Love Me Tomorrow (The Shirelles; Scepter). A nighttime lament by a new female quartet that throbs its sentiments with rough tenderness. That "love light in your eyes'" may not survive the dawn, but it has booted the Shirelles to the top of the pop charts.

Exodus (Hollywood Studio Orchestra; United Artists). The most successful film score since. Bridge on the River Kwai, rendered in apocalyptic sound. Viennese-born Composer Ernest Gold, a veteran of two decades of film scoring (On the Beach and The Defiant Ones), knows better than most of his colleagues how to write a mystery in a web of strings and nostalgia in a flute's falling sigh. The film's haunting theme hints of a talent for better things.

Music from Camelot (Andre Previn; Columbia). Backed by bass and drums, Pianist-Composer-Arranger Previn works his own Merlinesque magic on the world of Lerner and Loewe. As always happens when Previn sets his hand to it, the score emerges sounding as if it were written from the beginning to the measure of Previn's nervously elegant style. For those who prefer their scores straight, the Camelot Original Cast Album (Columbia) presents Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and a standard pit orchestra in the show's highly engaging tunes; one in particular, Follow Me, is heard here far more clearly than it ever is in the theater.

Emulsified (Rex Garvin and the Mighty Gravers; Epic). A chemistry lesson howled with lunatic intensity. The Gravers get that old emulsified feeling every time "you squeeze me and you hold me tight."

Memories Are Made of This (Ray Conniff Orchestra and Chorus; Columbia). Suds and saccharin by one of the slickest arrangers in the business. Filtered through the echo chamber of the mind, Conniff's heavily percussioned memories sound like nobody else's, but they bear some familiar titles: Moments to Remember, My Foolish Heart, No Other Love.

Ain't That Just Like a Woman (Fats Domino; Imperial). The last angry rock 'n' roller puts the finger on some famous ladies, Eve and Marie Antoinette. His charge: "You can buy a woman clothes/ Give her money on the side/ No matter what you do/ They's never satisfied."

Calcutta (Lawrence Welk and Orchestra; Dot). That old peddler of "Champagne Music"--better known in the trade as "sweet and moanin'," "holy chorus" or "sweet corn"--fields his first big hit single. With no lyrics or melody of any distinction, Welk's harpsichord-accordion arrangement has a slogging beat that apparently sets the jukebox crowd vibrating. The jocks have even taken to calling Bandsman Welk "Larry."

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