AWB has been hailed as the blackest-sounding white group since the Stones, but that's true only in a very technical sense. This Scottish band is comfortable with only the most narrow range of the music, chiefly with the complex instrumental arrangements of Gamble and Huff's Philadelphia sound. But AWB plays with learned awareness rather than with the fire of the Philly house band, MFSB (whose recent album, Universal Love, provides excellent counterpoint to this one).

AWB's accomplishment is a worthy one, of course, particularly since it comes at a time when black and white pop are more divorced from one another than ever. Hamish Stuart's voice is remarkably authentic in its Curtis Mayfield mannerisms, although he's never been given an interesting lyric to sing and it's beginning to look as though he won't be. Onnie McIntyre's guitar figure is beautiful, though if he knows a second one, he ought to use it. And if anything, the addition of drummer Steve Ferrone has buttressed the rhythm attack.

Yet on Cut the Cake, the riffing which was so engaging on AWB's first Atlantic album has begun to lose its novelty. The record seems listless, the pace always a shade too deliberate. This is an excessively cautious record, keyed by a determination to get everything "right." The tempo is neither too quick nor too slow; everything is played safe. This stands in striking contrast to the early Stones, who, whatever their technical flaws, never failed to go for an exciting feeling. If that could result in a slipshod track such as "Can I Get a Witness," it could also deliver something as completely remarkable as "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love." AWB is so trapped in its need to get all of the elaborate trappings of the soul sound down correctly that the feeling is at best tentative.

Cut the Cake sounds basically like a reprise of the first Atlantic album. It is devoid of personality, perhaps because the session musicians AWB emulates are generally faceless. But the group has not yet established itself, at least to me, as one that knows when to let its grasp of detail go in favor of passionate intensity. (RS 193)

DAVE MARSH