Burton Cummings' voice oozes insincerity without the saving grease of irony. One of the most technically impressive singers in rock, Cummings can effortlessly fatten or attenuate his timbre, fluff up or toughen his tone, chime or whine. His melismata are extraordinarily fluid, his rhythmic ease is debonair. It's a shame such splendid vocal chords have so little to communicate.

The only genuine emotions Cummings ever seems to feel are bratty misogyny and cheap cynicism—if the second can even be called an emotion. As for the first, Cummings has scarcely changed since "American Woman" and his tenure with the Guess Who. On Dream of a Child, his third solo album, he opines, "Women are fine and women are sweet; hanks of hair and piece of bone." (I doubt that the echo of the line from John Donne's metaphysical poem, "The Relic"—"A bracelet of bright hair about the bone"—is deliberate.) Cummings' cynicism, on the other hand, might be interesting if it weren't oh-so smug: "For I will play a rhapsody/Cleverly disguise it, so it's not been heard before."

As emotionally impoverished as he is, Cummings can't even make his own songs compelling. "Break It to Them Gently" tells the tale of a man fleeing the long arm of the law. Now a lot of highly remunerated rock stars have preposterously impersonated outlaws, but even the Eagles would bring a little more feeling to the fatuous line, "Cause I'm runnin' with a gun and it isn't any fun as a fugitive." I mean, gee, it isn't any fun when the Jacuzzi's on the fritz either.

Forgoing Richard Perry's assistance this time around, Burton Cummings produced Dream of a Child himself, drafting a small army of excellent musicians (guitarists Steve Cropper, Jeff Baxter and Dick Wagner, drummers Rick Schlosser and Jim Gordon, Little Feat's Bill Payne on synthesizer, et al.) that he never quite whips into an effective fighting force. Their playing is always proficient but never inspired. Though his flitting from genre to genre—from country music to MOR to Southern soul to jive jazz to hard rock—may show off Cummings' vocal versatility, it also underscores his lack of commitment to anything. Except, I suppose, his career. (RS 286)

KEN EMERSON