British blues has always been a workmanlike form, as much a job as a pleasure. Alvin Lee is smart enough to realize this, and having deserted his own limey blues band, Ten Years After, he has made In Flight in pursuit of a new image. Unfortunately, Lee's problem isn't easily wished away. He sinks into new restrictions quicker than he can soar away from the old ones.

Ten Years After was never much of a group, although they made some interesting records, particularly Ssssh and Watt. The group was the sleeper surprise of Woodstock, and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "I'm Going Home" were significant pre-heavy-metal tours de farce for guitar. All of their exciting moments, though, had as much to do with stagecraft as music. Lee's flashing smile was as important as the white heat of his guitar runs. Alvin Lee was fast, the epitome of the British speed demon guitarists, but his speed and his smile were intertwined forever. The one made him salable, the other made him identifiable; I was never sure which was which, but we all know what too much speed does for the teeth. Still, without those alabaster incisors, Ten Years After might have lent new meaning to the concept of facelessness which dominates so much of the rest of British blues.

For all its limits, Lee's twin talents gave them a head start over the various Foghats, Savoy Browns and Mayalls. Lee has personality, if not charisma, and the sense of humor—not just fun, which is intimately tied to work—that ought to go with it. It is difficult to imagine even such an inspired British bluesman as Eric Clapton having the ironic self-perspective to tote a watermelon over his shoulder as he trudged off the Woodstock stage, in full view of 500,000 fans and half as many cameras.

Lee is in flight, in deed as well as concept, on his new album. Fleeing that confining image, however, he seems desperate, uncertain of just what he'll choose to replace it with. Consequently, In Flight is a kitchen-sink job: a live album, two records, with horns and a female chorus. The music can't decide between rock and blues and half-assed mellow jazz. There isn't a chance for any of the facets to shine long enough to give the record—or Alvin—focus.

Lee's best moves are as a rock & roller, even if his most coherent ones are still tied to his version of the blues. The most interesting track on the album, "Mystery Train," fails utterly. After Elvis Presley's and Junior Parker's versions, "Mystery Train" wasn't a song anymore at all; it was a pair of records, each defining the limits of one of its dual themes (sex and death). Lee has nothing to add to that except a pleasant, smoky voice.

But even that voice is obscured by the awful chorus. The English have been trying for a decade to figure out what to do with the Stax concept—the way voices and horns are used in Memphis — without much luck. Lee's ideas aren't much more useful than Joe Cocker's. The chorus shouldn't drown out the singer in an arrangement like this; it should add tension. Here the chorus elasticizes everything, drawing it out to the point of boredom. It happens time and again—on "Slow Down," "Money Honey," which had a chance to be special, even Lee's own best song, "I'm Writing You a Letter."

Surprisingly, Mel Collins's sax and flute are handled with some taste, probably because they are not, as with most blues groups which resort to horns, bowled over by a blaring brass section. (I know of no great white rock record in which brass plays a dominant role.) But for all their limitations, the rock songs are still more effective than Lee's blues, which for the most part are just as excessive in length and velocity as those he played with Ten Years After. Only sax dipping in and out reminds that this is not a TYA record. With his usual irony, though, Lee redeems himself a little, simply by calling one of the songs "Every Blues You've Ever Heard." He ought to be required to open his show with it as a sort of caveat emptor—and not he alone, but the whole sorry batch of Anglo blues mummies.

Still, this isn't as inauspicious a debut as I may have made it seem. Lee has broken free of the TYA image, certifying himself as a rock singer of some talent. The rockabilly cuts here move, and if it weren't for the chorus, you could say they never get cute, as too much British pseudo-rockabilly does. With a little reorganization, Lee might have a fine post-heavy band in the making.

Dave Marsh is music critic for 'Newsday.' (RS 184)

DAVE MARSH