You'd hardly expect, listening to the washed-out tunelessness and muzaky production of its AM cut, "Mister Can't You See," that Buffy Sainte-Marie's closest thing to a rock album would stand much of a chance. But Buffy turns out to know a lot more about rock and roll than either this song, or everything she's done before it, would indicate.

There are two main reasons why the album works as well as it does, and one of them is sheer versatility–instead of learning a few standard rock paces and tiredly running through them ad dreary infinitum, Buffy has been loose enough to come up with 11 different kinds of songs and 11 different approaches to go with them. It's a dangerously hit-or-miss tactic, but her innate ear for what's good manages to keep weak moments (like the aggressively, belligerently flat "Not The Lovin' Kind," or her everybody-else-does-it-better version of "My Baby Left Me") at a minimum.

The other thing that makes Moonshot so successful is Buffy's commendable willingness this time to let the music help shape her singing style, instead of the other way around. She still sounds as personalized as ever, but not nearly so mannered, and she really has done a fine job of molding herself to the material. Her rock singing is both tough and soulful, gutsy as ever and yet remarkably sensitive to the music's varying moods.

"Native North American Child," with lyrics consisting mostly of tribal names, is the hardest rocker here, ballsy in the manner of her unforgettable "97 Men In This Here Town ...," terrifically catchy, beautifully performed. Mickey Newbury's "Sweet Memories" has a smoother, more balladlike tone, and here Buffy even manages to fit herself in between the accents of a standard girls'-chorus backup. "Jeremiah" and "Lay It Down" are both in similar tense, quasi-rock veins, with neither one overly distinctive but both well done just the same.

"I Wanna Hold Your Hand Forever" is a little on the cloying side, with Buffy sounding a lot like Judee Sill at her most sugary, but "He's an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo" is really a delight, fluid and charming yet ingenuously simple. The two most unusual and ambitious cuts here, "Moonshot" and "You Know How To Turn On Those Lights," use an even simpler tone and blend it with something sinister and unexpected; the results are utterly chilling. With an air of malevolent mockery that never quite descends into overt sarcasm, she casts a baleful eye at space-age technology ("I know a boy from a tribe so primitive/He can call me up without no telephone") and at the smugness of a guy who knows "how to turn on those lights/Don't you, Baby?/You know every switch and every button in the house/Don't you, Baby?" The "Lights" song is more immediate and arresting, but "Moonshot" is the one to linger on, its production eerie and delicate enough to match the poetry and eloquence of Buffy's lyrics.

What's best about Moonshot is that, considering the kind of experimental stylistic departure it represents, it nonetheless bears such a strongly personal stamp. It shows off a do-it-yourselfery so much deeper than Buffy's mere writing, playing, co-producing, and belting out everything so deliberate and strong, that there can be no question where the real energy of her music is coming from, or of how integral and genuine that energy–whatever form she cares to try out next–will always be. (RS 111)

JANET MASLIN