With his born-to-rock rasp, his pungent guitar-and-drums sound and his severely undernourished lyrics, Vancouver-bred Bryan Adams has typically produced the closest thing yet to generic rock & roll, long on formal excellence but short on originality. Nevertheless, his admirable Top Ten ballad of two years ago, "Straight from the Heart," showed that Adams could marshal his abilities and create truly moving music. And while Reckless, his fourth album, doesn't offer a track to compare with that one, it is Adams' most satisfying LP to date, as much for the overall sound as for the strength of any of its individual cuts.

Coproducers Bob Clearmountain and Adams have refined a brittle, less bluesy version of the sound that Don Gehman and John Cougar Mellencamp have developed over the years, and it's mighty hard to resist, even when a song itself is lacking. The debt to Clearmountain's work on the Stones' Tattoo You is clear enough on the party rocker "She's Only Happy When She's Dancin'." Fuller sounding is the hit single "Run to You," but the banality of its lyrics ("I know her love is true/But it's so damn easy makin' love to you") points up Adams and cowriter Jim Vallance's biggest shortcoming. You'd think, for instance, that they could have churned out a more salubrious call to AOR arms than the reactionary "Kids Wanna Rock," a get-that-pop-music-off-my-radio anthem that's weaker than Billy Joel's undervalued "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me."

Some equally lumpish lyrics can't totally bludgeon the oomph of "Summer of '69." Still, for some old-fashioned pile drivers, it's best to hear Adams wrap his chops around the yearning melody of "One Night Love Affair" and "It's Only Love," in which Adams swaps verses with guest vocalist Tina Turner. For the gravel-on-velvet fans, Reckless does supply a fine slow song, "Heaven," but that was a hit last year from a movie soundtrack. Ah, well – at this writing, Reckless is the most frequently played LP on album radio, and with its beautiful by-the-numbers sound, it's no wonder. Looking for challenge, adventure, excitement? Join the navy. (RS 439)

CHRISTOPHER CONNELLY