Dionne Warwicke's voice is a perfect producer's vehicle. Comfortable with both soul and pop material, her singing is naturally languid, without the gritty inner tension and terrors of Aretha Franklin or Diana Ross. Still she is as resilient as either and just as capable of projecting a sense of excitement.

Thom Bell understood this perfectly when he put her and the Spinners together for "Then Came You." That single worked because that coupling created tension. Pitting her cultured cool against their Motown-based wildness, Bell made a vocal track that threatened to fly apart so often it gripped the listener from the first phrase. After that, it hardly mattered that the music was merely recycled "Rock and Roll Baby."

Unfortunately, "Then Came You" is the only Bell-produced track on Warwicke's new album. The rest of it is the responsibility of Jerry Ragovoy, who cowrote, produced and arranged the other nine songs. The sheer mediocrity of it leads me to wonder whether Ragovoy really thinks his ideas are exceptional, whether he has some fantasy about single-handedly becoming Warwicke's new Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Ragovoy's arrangements are mundane. He has no ideas as a producer that weren't conventions a decade ago when he began producing. As a songwriter, he's no longer up to writing the likes of "Piece of My Heart" or "Cry Baby," both of which he cowrote.

But Ragovoy's real fault as Warwicke's new mastermind may be that he is sympathetic in the wrong way. Warwicke's cool style verges at times on the icy; the idea of her losing her composure isn't simply absurd, it never occurs. The arrangements have to create the tension that will keep her (and us) interested. Bacharach and David did so almost undefinably — although a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that their arrangements were so first-rate that Warwicke ran the risk of being a secondary effect, which ought to have been challenge enough. Or again, on a song like "Don't Make Me Over" or "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," Warwicke would be offered a lyric in which she could fully engage herself. That isn't likely to happen with even the best of the Ragovoy songs here. "Take It from Me" moves a little but it has no feeling of necessity, nothing to draw the listener—or, I suspect, the singer—into it. "Move Me No Mountain" has a mildly interesting lyric but Warwicke's voice sinks into the mix rather than riding on it. The other cuts are just bland.

Given the proper producer, or the proper treatment by this one, Dionne Warwicke has proved with "Then Came You" that she still has it to be a great popular singer. This album seems to proclaim that she will be a great unpopular one. (RS 185)

DAVE MARSH