At the end of "Don't Make Me Over," Dionne Warwick (this is in 1963) breaks out of the song twice to sing, to yell, with incredible fervor, "Accept me for what I am. Accept me for the things that I do," drums pounding and cymbals crashing around her. Being a black pop singer isn't easy. There are too many definitions, expectations and demands that have to be sidestepped, too many people wondering where you at. Dionne Warwicke steps rather nicely even if she never moves out of an area more than, say, five feet in circumference. I guess the space is comfortable.

On the back cover of her new album, Dionne is pictured head-to-head with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, her long-time producer/composers, one on either side of her like bookends that's her space; that's her niche. She moves in it gracefully, with assurance, even with a wonderful, if somewhat over refined, beauty. May be a bird in a gilded cage, but she's sitting pretty.

If it seems Bacharach and David have defined (confined) Dionne Warwicke, consider (1) that she has, to a great extent, defined them as well and (2) that they the three of them working as a team within a carefully circumscribed area, rather like a group of highly-trained technicians have together achieved a kind of elegant perfection. Warwicke is limited by her sophistication, her slickness, her restraint, her tendency to slip and say, "One less bell to ahnswer," etc: limitations that Bacharach-David seem to share. This prevents Dionne from being Miss Funk, but so what? In their chosen field, needless to say, the team's stylistic limitations are transformed into virtues of varying degrees. Once you come to terms with the word "sophistication" (as it is used in, for instance, the Copacabana), Dionne Warwicke can be sheer pleasure.

Can be. That brings us to Dionne, the latest chapter in a collaborative work that is both consistently fine and maddeningly unvaried. It's not that Warwicke-Bacharach-David haven't changed but that many of the changes seem like minor adjustments in an instantly-recognizable, trademark Sound. At times the style has been refined to the point of attenuation, like a Victorian novel. Listening to Dionne Warwick's Golden Hits, Part One (Scepter SPS565)–the essential work from the early years–and her latest offering, the first thing that strikes you is the amount of real feeling conveyed by Dionne in her early songs. Take "Anyone Who Had a Heart," which begins with the lines, "Anyone who ever loved/could look at me/and know that I love you./Anyone who ever dreamed/could look at me/and know I dream of you." Dionne sings with an amazing combination of lovely purity and aching, uncomprehending emotion; the song smolders with a just-under-the-surface intensity that comes pounding up with unexpected force at the end, the closing cries all the more powerful for the opening restraint.

There's nothing to compare to this–or "Walk on By," "Don't Make Me Over," "Make It Easy on Yourself" or "Reach Out for Me" on the new album. The emotion hasn't disappeared–draining a voice as good as Warwicke's of feeling would be near impossible–but what remains is almost smothered by Bacharach-David's damned delicacy of expression and a subtlety that approaches the obsessive. The fault is not Dionne's she's astonishingly effective within the more-than-usually limited range of emotions she is allowed to explore. The producers, who wrote seven out of the ten songs, have simply failed to give her the opportunity to get into anything heavier than the lament of "One Less Bell to Answer," which, I must admit, is quite effectively underplayed in this version.

The continued narrowing-to-perfection of the Bacharach-David sound also leaves me somewhat ambivalent. With few exceptions, the production work is classically simple, clear and brilliant. There are lots of violins, bursts of horns, but instead of weighing the songs down with great thick lumps of sound, they seem to have let even more space into their characteristically light, bright style–the violins float nicely in that space. Only once or twice is Dionne joined by a chorus and, even in understatement, which seems to be her mode throughout, she clearly doesn't need any support. And yet, when compared with the old sound, the new album feels slightly stiff. While the early sound was hardly rough or gritty, still it didn't have the polished and waxed finish it now has; they have more intelligence, more craft, now, but less to say.

On several cuts, however, everything comes together: The opener, "I Just Have to Breathe," is built on a clear, precise piano line and surges of violins, Warwicke's singing, from the beginning, very quiet, very direct, beautifully effortless. She seems to grasp every phrase completely and with understanding, bringing it to full expression. The lyrics are among the best here: "For me to love you/I just have to breathe," and the song ends with the plea, "In this world where nothing stays the same/stay with me." Dionne delivers the last three words one at a time, imploringly, somehow managing to capture in that small space more intensity than many singers gather in an album.

"The Balance of Nature," which follows, is potentially a vacuous, silly love song about love which begins, "Once/to every bird there comes along/the one bird that sings her a sweeter song." But it's sweetly irresistible, saved by the old team restraint: the music, mainly what sounds like a lightly-strummed banjo, is so fragile it feels like it might blow away and, on the surface, the vocal gives the same illusion, but Dionne's control keeps even the most tenuous elements anchored. She never lets one word, one lighter-than-air inflection escape.

"Close to You" is even sillier than "Balance of Nature": "Why do birds suddenly appear/every time you are near?" (the aviary motif again)–why do I like it? There are more floating-on-a-cloud vocals but when the violins seem to be unreasonably loud in a particular swell of orchestral emotion, Dionne rides their crest without even appearing to raise her voice.

Even the cuts which are resistible are eminently listenable (it does get a little cloying, though, on the final cut, a bit of ephemera called "Hasbrook Heights"). The elegant display of social consciousness in "Be Aware" is saved by a strong arrangement (but understated, always understated–it begins and ends with a series of insistent knocks: the real world trying to get in? or the Po-lice?) and interesting phrasing, a strong point throughout. The whole package is so fucking "tasteful" it threatens to disappear in a cloud of perfume (or perhaps an odorless spray), but there is something that Dionne Warwicke does even when she's singing about going away for the weekend that I'll never really understand. I just like it. (RS 102)

VINCE ALETTI