Love Beach isn't simply bad, it's downright pathetic. Stale and full of ennui, this album makes washing the dishes seem a more creative act by comparison. Greg Lake contributes a handful of tediously standardized song forms while taking his three-chord arias and bel canto blues as haughtily as though he were singing lyrics by Guiseppe Verdi, not Peter Sinfield. Keith Emerson delivers another rip-off from the classics and a side-long ballad. Reduced to being a session player in his own band, the latter's accompaniments now sound like advertising jingles.

Emerson's new meisterwork, "Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman," is more interesting than "Pirates" was, but only because its composer has elected to work out the timbre changes on his keyboards rather than employ an elephantine orchestra again. Melodically, the tune is as vague as it is pompous; harmonically, it's a heap of sterile romantic clichés. That you can hear echoes of the ELP of old simply means that Emerson hasn't learned—or borrowed—a new riff in five years. Once more, Sinfield's lyrics are a grotesque embarrassment, probably accounting for Lake's wooden demeanor. (RS 286)

MICHAEL BLOOM