Big Circumstance,' the first new studio album in more than two years from the Canadian folk rocker Bruce Cockburn, is a rewarding mess. Sixty-one minutes long, touching on far-reaching issues as well as more standard singer-songwriter topics, Big Circumstance is impressive, even if it ends up being a case of too much of a good thing.

Stealing Fire, from 1984, was a breakthrough LP, both musically and personally, for Cockburn. On that record, his social-activist stand and mystical bent finally coalesced, and all his ambitions as a lyricist were justified by the most muscular music he and his band had yet developed. As with World of Wonders (1986), Big Circumstance builds on those successes. Its depictions of ecological nightmares and statements of forthright anger are all straight-faced and terse.

But most of the eleven lengthy songs on Big Circumstance could use some pruning. The issues Cockburn addresses on the album deserve our attention, and his settings for them are for the most part pleasing and entirely appropriate, but too often he belabors his message. (RS 548)

JIMMY GUTERMAN