Producer Rick Rubin has become something of a savior for flatlined musical icons. Two years ago, he restored luster to the career of Johnny Cash. Rubin's latest reclamation project is Donovan Leitch, the folk rocker who added a splash of patchouli to the Top 40 in the mid- and late 1960s. Unfortunately, Sutras is a flawed flashback. Donovan's greatest talent has always been framing his moon-June musings within a hummable context. But on Sutras, Donovan trips into self-indulgence, getting as metaphysical as he wanna be.

Quiet ballads, crafted to the point of preciousness, dominate the album. And Donovan takes his album title seriously, putting new melodies to ancient Chinese and Buddhist texts as well as Irish blessings. Sappho and Edgar Allan Poe also contribute lyrics. Together with Donovan's own spiritual ramblings, these old-school rhymes become painfully dour songs about flocks of stars, the quiet earth, flowing hair, the fair moon, the seasons and the endless sky. What year is this, anyway?

To be fair, many of these passages weren't written with late-20th-century popular song in mind. Still, Poe's "Eldorado" and "The Way," adapted from the Tao te ching, inspire Donovan's best work on the record. In "Eldorado," he sings with an intensity that suits a man's harrowing journey into darkness. In "The Way," Donovan punctuates its dizzy lyric ("Out of nothing comes the one/Out of one comes the two/Out of two comes three/Out of three comes all things") with an appropriately playful tune that recalls the irresistible lilt of Donovan's '67 hit, "There Is a Mountain," and is embellished by Dave Navarro's gurgling electric sitar.

Ultimately, these musical pleasures are engulfed by a sanctimonious New Age vibe that makes Sutras seem more like a sermon than serious music. If this is spirituality, give me the Church of the Poison Mind. (RS 748)

ERIK HIMMELSBACH