Sounds in a Summer Groove

By JAY COCKS

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps (Reprise/Warner Bros.). This kind of record vindicates all previous claims of greatness and clears the way for new ones. The melodies of these nine songs are insistent, instantly captivating. The lyrics veer between recollections of the mythic past to reveries of violence, from lines like haiku ("Aurora borealis/ The icy sky at night/ Paddles cut the water/ In a long and hurried flight") to verbal lasers of lancing irony ("Hard to believe that love is free now/ Welfare mothers make better lovers"). Young is in such thorough command throughout that he can jump a century between lines of a verse, begin a song like Powderfinger as a folk tale ("Look out, Mama, there's a white boat comin' up the river"), then turn it into an apocalypse. Of all rock's major figures, Young seems to have absorbed the most from the punk movement. The music on this record, punched up in part by Young's band, Crazy Horse, is full of brash challenge, like the best punk. Even his acoustic songs--sometimes witty, often wildly romantic--have the kind of recklessness and daring that punk stands for but only fitfully delivers. There are other specters and influences hovering around this record, from Mark Twain to Sam Peckinpah to Johnny Rotten, and it is one mark of Young's achievement that he can sit them all down around the fire and make them seem like brothers.

Donna Summer: Bad Girls (Casablanca). While everyone's gone disco, Summer, the best disco singer in the field, is rocking harder. About one side's worth of songs on this double set will be no trial for even the toughest disco adversary, because Donna has swell pipes and because she is trying to give the music more range and bite. Watch out, Diana Ross.

Dire Straits: Communique (Warner Bros.) and The Cars: Candy-O (Elektra) are two follow-ups to albums that were large --and largely surprise--hits some months back. Both offer again pretty much the same bill of fare, without the single tune that snags your ear straight off and streamlines the journey to the Top Ten. The Cars, a Boston band, go big for flash, echo and cosmic inconclusion. Dire Straits are English and purvey a sort of oblique narrative rock so relaxed and laid back, with its easygoing guitar licks and sleepytime vocals, that the record could have been recorded live in a hammock.

Nick Lowe: Labour of Lust (Columbia). It's all in the title: carbolic little anthems to carnality, full of ironic world-weariness and melodies that take you by surprise. Love songs that draw blood by one of rock's wittiest writers.

Joni Mitchell: Mingus (Asylum). An act of elaborate and loving homage to the late Charles Mingus, formidable bass player and jazz composer. The record is more emotional in its dedication than in its musicianship, however. Mitchell's lyrics for Mingus' sometimes abstruse music get a little toplofty, and her sidemen--Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Jaco Pastorius are among the most renowned--stay so aloof and mechanical the record turns to stainless steel.

Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warner Bros.). His musical excursions have carried him from Hawaii to the Tex-Mex border, but this time out Cooder stays closer to the mainstream, floating lightly through the fast, cool and sometimes stormy currents of rhythm and blues. The album's nine songs include one co-written by Cooder and eight other tunes, which, if not classics already, will surely be so now.

Rachel Sweet: Fool Around (Stiff/Columbia) and Lene Lovich: Stateless (Stiff/Epic) arrive via England from that paragon of excellent eccentricity, Stiff Records, where these young women are not only la-belmates but exemplars of the two extremes of rock vocal styles, contemporary female division. Lovich seems to have tak en vocal seminars from Nico and Patti Smith. Her songs (many co-written by Lovich) are feckless threnodies about lovelessness, entrapment and alienation. Sweet, who is sunnier in disposition, lays down a sort of teasing, jailbait rock that relies on snappy melodies and gum-cracking sensuality.

James Brown: The Original Disco Man ( Polydor). See what the man says? Don't argue. This is James Brown, the regent of volcanic soul, and even after all these years (say around 20) and some pretty rag ged records, royalty is due some respect. Nice thing is, James does not warrant any special considerations this time around. This is a solid, soulful record that shows where disco went to school. At least one cut, the wonderfully titled It's Too Funky in Here, could be played on the radio from now to Christmas. --Jay Cocks

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