Like too many hard-rock albums in the last year or so, the latest by the mall-metal stalwarts in Cinderella is a blatant bid for the respect of the non-MTV cognoscenti – a dubious distinction for a genre that thrives on upsetting parents and rock critics rather than begging their approval. The mode is classic hippie-era (i.e., premetal) white blues, and as with the equally reverent roots moves so many New Wave garage bands made a half decade ago, this one sometimes feels like a retreat. Regardless, Heartbreak Station is amazingly likable and even brave: You'd have to search pretty far to find white blues this consistently catchy and rhythmic, this varied, this free of gut-busting macho slop. Even in the wake of boogie successes by the Black Crowes and their ilk, this is hardly the music you'd expect platinum poodle hairs to make.

Cinderella's fervid 1989 single "Coming Home" earned frontman Tom Keifer the right to cover a Janis Joplin song at Farm Aid this past spring, and on Heartbreak Station, he swings his ragged yelp like a scythe – or maybe like Axl Rose with fewer monkeys on his back. Tempering their shriller tendencies with strings, saxes, logrolling bottleneck blues, whorehouse piano, trashy tambourines and what sounds like a jew's-harp, Keifer's backup boys replicate Big Brother and the Holding Company's crunch, pausing for pit stops in the neighborhoods of not just Bad Company, Humble Pie and Led Zep but of the Allmans, James Brown and even the Flying Burrito Brothers.

The Achilles' heel is the lyrics, which are so clichéd they're almost comic: Keifer wants to be free like the wind, doesn't worry about tomorrow and sees the devil in his woman's face. He's going through changes, but rock keeps him young. Though repeated exposure to his Exile on Main Street muffle mouthing in "Love's Gone Bad" and "Make Your Own Way" might reveal sage surprises, Heartbreak Station's only guaranteed wisdom comes right at the start, on "The More Things Change," when Keifer wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and then turns on his radio "to the same old song, some big mouth talking, trying to tell us where the world went wrong." As anti-"peace and love" (Keifer phrase) cynicism goes, these sentiments rank with "How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?" on the new Pet Shop Boys LP. So how come, two songs later, Keifer regurgitates the same old rote whines about Tipper Gore and televangelism? Maybe he's not so cynical after all, or maybe he's got nothing else to say; either way, he's confused. Five or six hit cassingles from now, maybe his confusion, like Axl's, will seem like an asset. If that happens, Heartbreak Station could prove the most inescapable hard rock since Appetite for Destruction. (RS 595)

CHUCK EDDY