Golden Earring has been one of Holland's top bands for eight years and is just now approaching generally deserved world-wide success as a good, flashy hard-rock band. Unfortunately, it also has some crippling pretensions. Most of Side Two's effectiveness is diluted by long, tedious stretches of instrumental meandering. Even Side One's compelling "Vanilla Queen" suffers from an irrelevant tailpiece of spacey noises and inferior riffing. But its British hit, "Radar Love" (which could have been more adroitly edited), remains a superbly mesmeric highway rocker, complete with a delightful reference to Brenda Lee's 1966 "Coming On Strong" and a great hook of a chorus. If Golden Earring conquers its distracting improvisational tendencies, it will be a band to reckon with. (RS 163)

KEN BARNES