At last Don McLean has made a thoroughly appealing album that properly showcases his impressive strengths — sincerity, good humor, a lovely naive romanticism—while allowing only brief exposure of those traits that have previously proved embarrassing: a self-congratulatory streak that can slip into paranoia and a starry-eyed word gushing that doesn't always parse. Homeless Brother admirably fulfills the task of making McLean a credible artist once again. It erases any memory of his depressed comedown from the phenomenal success of "American Pie," while putting to rest the nagging notion that that catchy flag waver was the one flash in a lucky folkie's pan.

The album's centerpiece suite is a loose trio of tunes consisting of McLean's title song, George Harrison's "Sunshine Life for Me" and another McLean song, "The Legend of Andrew McCrew." Together they comprise a picture of life on the road that is at once exposé, glamorization and tall tale. The humming presence on "Homeless Brother" of that university-bred wandering minstrel Pete Seeger emphasizes the pseudo poeticized aspect of this hobo tradition McLean is working: This whole on-the-road mystique is just distanced and idealized enough to serve as the perfect conceptual vehicle for a post-Dylan descendant of Guthrie, and "Brother" neatly weds Woody's hard traveling with some Hattie Carrollera fingerpointing and a painless last verse aside making it all "relevant" to today. "Sunshine Life" is spare and sparkling, with Don on banjo over Ralph MacDonald's apt tabla licks: This paean to wandering lightens the mood created by the previous track and puts it in perspective. "Andrew McCrew," an eerie and droll account of an unlucky railrider whose mummified corpse becomes a sideshow attraction, might well have been a maudlin disaster, considering the subject matter and McLean's past propensities; instead, it's mordantly comic, darkly swinging drinker's song, with the kind of warped night-jazz feel that Tom Waits excels at creating. McLean has soundly and safely brought us back from his nostalgic reverie.

The rest of the album is full of delight. "La La Love You," an inconsequential and entirely infectious bit of fluff, is a pure pop creation; the perfect car radio song, it even contains the de rigueur prepubescent bit of "daring" wordplay. "Wonderful Baby" is a lullaby worthy of a Busby Berkeley fantasy, with infants floating by on clouds and female angels sighing big breezes. "You Have Lived," a slightly pompous love song, is lyrically a bit specious, and "Tangled (Like a Spider in Her Hair)" gets tangled in its own ungainly imagery. But "Crying in the Chapel," an acapella match with the Persuasions, is a full-throated treat. "Did You Know," the finale, has McLean singing emotionally but restrainedly over simple guitar and some tenor sax noodling: It's a lovely cut, and a fine example of what throughout has been Joe Dorn's consistently well-advised production. (RS 178)

TOM NOLAN