Aretha's new album is quite disorienting. Except for the single. "Rock Steady," there's nothing left of her old Memphis-Muscle Shoals soul sound; in fact it sounds closer to a pop record than a soul record. Two of the songs Aretha wrote for the album. "First Snow in Kokomo" and "All The King's Horses" could pass for tunes from old Broadway musicals if you didn't check the album credits.

There are also some jarring lapses in taste, (like the "jingle bells" backups in a Burt Bacharach song, and several lapses in just plain musicianship. The list of sidemen is impressive–Cornell Dupree on guitar, Bernard Purdie on drums. Chuck Rainey on bass, plus guest appearances by Billy Preston, Dr. John, Donny Hathaway, and Hubert Laws on flute. But they don't play as tightly as Aretha's earlier bands used to. No one seems to be giving the band direction. Also, to varying degrees, the musicians seem to be ill at ease with the largely pop material on the album.

Nonetheless, Young, Gifted and Black is an extremely personal, beautiful record, and is controlled throughout by one sensibility, Miss Franklin's. Unlike some of her past records, this one is all hers–the sloppy, occasionally awkward and erratic quality as much as the charm and naivete, the warmth, and the emotional power she generates.

A restless, adventurous spirit pervades everything. On this album, she never plays it safe. Eight of the songs were originally done by other people, but there's not one conventional cover version. She often rips open the arrangement, varying the tempo, screaming out the key lines, and thereby bringing out new meanings while destroying the original balance. Her singing is uniformly excellent, though the quality of the backup singing varies a good deal. Unfortunately the arrangements of the songs often remain scarred, and something like "The Long and Winding Road" alternates between brilliance and dullness. But the good parts, as in the song's break, are exceptionally powerful.

Aretha is trying to deal with delicate, private areas of herself on this record. Soul music deals with deep feelings, but the singer usually distances himself from the song, which he usually hasn't written to begin with. Material is most often handled in a spirit of sincerity, which has been consciously parodied by James Brown and Tina Turner, and unconsciously parodied by Isaac Hayes. Gospel singing–and, in a different way, some forms of white rock and roll - at least sometimes reaches moments of more direct personal communication. This is what Aretha seems to be struggling to do throughout the record–in the sudden "Thank you. Jesus" in "Young, Gifted and Black," through the careful selection of material that she could relate to personally, and, above all, in the songs she wrote for herself.

The four original compositions, with the exception of "Rock Steady," are much more sedate and wistful than the other songs on the album. They're also less flawed technically, and once you acclimate yourself to the pop idiom they're written in, quite moving and poetic. "First Snow in Kokomo" is the weirdest–a memory - fantasy about people learning how to make music, and about giving birth. The other two are love songs–they have a completely uncynical, dreamlike belief in the power of love, and complete incomprehension when things don't work out. In the midst of her best song, "Daydreaming," she sings: "When he's lonesome and love-starved, I'll be there to feed him." And it evokes a flood of feelings–empathy with the aspiration, sadness that things seem to never work out the way she would like them to, and, in me, a deep feeling of identification with her and with what she's doing. And I suppose that's the reason that, with all its flaws, this record has such a powerful hold on me. (RS 104)

RUSSELL GERSTEN