High Land, Hard Rain, the debut album by Aztec Camera, is the kind of pop record you were afraid they didn't make anymore. Fear not automatic-pilot drum machines and humorlessly percolating synthesizers. Young singer-songwriter-guitarist Roddy Frame's anxious boyish tenor and shy romantic melodies are instead stirred by the wind-chine strumming of acoustic guitars, gently draped over simple rhythm and keyboard touches. Like Love's classic 1967 LP Forever Changes, a lush orchestral-folk opus released in the midst of psychedelia's greatest excesses, High Land, Hard Rain is radical not only in its musical restraint but in its arrogant rejection of fashion.

There is a proud confessional glow to such love letters as "Oblivious" and "Pillar to Post" that amplifies Aztec Camera's folkie charm. Frame can be corny in his adolescent sexual earnestness, awkwardly naive in his poetic ambitions ("We'll take a train to the graves again/That we can learn the value of life," he sings in "Back on Board"). But the combination of his acoustic daring and exposed lyrical nerves can set off emotional waves, which reach a quiet peak with "We Could Send Letters." Amid galloping acoustic guitars and subtle waterfall piano trickles, Frame carries a torch for a recent lover, the desperate sincerity in his voice perfect for a touching couplet like "So if we weaken we can call it stress/You've got my trust I've got your home address." With cynicism the dominant passion of pop in the Eighties, believe me, this is one hard rain that refreshes. (RS 404)

DAVID FRICKE