I've never understood why a 40-minute album which can be happily listened to in its entirety is supposed to represent progress over the four-minute single which holds up under ten consecutive plays. Those two essential qualities of every great single—density and repeatability—Andy Pratt's "Avenging Annie" exhibits in abundance, and while the rest of Andy Pratt doesn't have "Annie"'s enormous tensile strength, it certainly has enough sparkling material to call for a drastic adjustment of the above ratio. In all fairness, in its organization, spirit and drive, "Avenging Annie" is one of the classic singles of this or any year, and therefore wreaks havoc on the principle of distributed energy almost every LP (outside of a greatest hits) is founded upon.

So far, however, "Annie" hasn't become much more than a staple on Boston FM. Andy is the scion of a military-industrial fortune, the owner of his own studio in the countryside outside of Boston, and an ex-Harvard student. He's depicted on the back cover in his Brooks Brothers corduroy jacket and crew-neck sweater against some New England seascape—another aristocrat turned pop musician. Yet Andy also happens to be one of the most uninhibited, not to say eccentric, talents in recent memory.

In the most striking role reversal since Dylan sang "House of the Rising Sun," Andy plays the Avenger herself. The quickly modified premise of both melody and tale is Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd," only here Floyd is a city boy, and a "sensitive outlaw." Annie was the avenger of womanhood whose mission it was to keep in line "All you spoiled young hippies"—that is, until she met Floyd. Andy sings it in a keening falsetto, all the while powering a phenomenal see-saw of a bass line. Former Van Morrison drummer Rick Shlosser's firecracker style and the interplay of piano and organ a la Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from My Friends" round out Andy's credentials as master arranger and instrumentalist. He has also managed to surround himself with unvaryingly fine musicians like Shlosser and guitarists Jim Thompson and Anistasios Karatza—all the more impressive since almost none of them are at all known.

The music throughout the album is playful, experimental and volatile, and it has its debts. Andy's falsetto, which he climbs up to as a way of climbing out of well-bred normality, often sounds like Neil Young, and Andy's "Summer, Summer" resembles Neil's "I Believe in You." His careening and otherwise highly idiosyncratic "Sittin' Down in the Twilight" contains a chord change, piano lick and vocal intonation typical of Leon Russell. But for the most part, Andy has so much intrinsic personality that he has difficulty getting a grip on it; he's flying off in all directions. The effect of all the gasping and agonizing on songs like "Inside Me Wants Out" is very physical, very compelling and completely nuts. Perhaps it's just my own pathology, but I find all of this tempting of lunacy very exhilarating.

Andy is, however, capable of stepping outside himself long enough to do satire: "It's All Behind You" is filled with guru-vy, tres deep utterances and lame sitar noodlings. Or he can make simple, pretty and unaffected emotional statements like "Give It All to Music" and "So Fine." But these exist mainly as respite from the prevailing vertigo. "All the King's Weight" is a dramatic parable; Andy sings it like a sullen child talking behind the backs of his elders. "Who Am I Talking To" is bumpy and dazed like the old Tyrannosaurus Rex. "Sittin' Down in the Twilight," whose first chorus is sung a la Lou Christie and whose last is accented by a wonderful trombone, undergoes phonetic and rational breakdown: "It's a wallet a full wallet/I'm gonna jump out and grab you stab you/Richard Shlosser plays the drums/Sit down on the twallet."

Andy Pratt is not really a mature work—he's still toying with different styles, singing songs about his parents, trying to discover his true voice. But in a career just beginning (he has one earlier LP on Polydor), that's only encouraging. "Avenging Annie"'s greatness is beyond dispute, while the rest of Andy Pratt is quirky, manic and perhaps a minority taste. But it's ultimately worth-while for that. (RS 136)

BEN GERSON