John David Souther's second solo album benefits from a beautiful, all-star Peter Asher production. More sophisticated than either his first album or the two Souther-Hillman-Furay albums, Black Rose underscores Souther's melodic writing, his strongest point, with some genuinely innovative arrangements by David Campbell, the classically trained musician who scored "Prisoner in Disguise" for Linda Ronstadt. "Silver Blue," much of which Campbell has scored as a duet for voice and plucked double bass and violas, is a starkly arresting production, while setting "Faithless Love" into a semiformal piece for voice, acoustic guitar and chamber ensemble transforms a prettier-than-average country-rock ballad into an eloquent one. "Doors Swing Open," a complex tune based on ninth and minor sixth chords, boasts an elegantly lush arrangement that both gives it shape and highlights its lovely chromaticism.

With its strengths, Black Rose is still far from great. Souther's singing, which merges Michael Murphey with Jackson Browne's phrasing, has diminished in power markedly since his first album. When not sounding uncomfortable (as in the flat, strained quasi-blues riff at the end of "If You Have Crying Eyes"), he sounds petulant. Souther's song lyrics, whose favorite subject is Hollywood-style erotic angst, affect the slangy, cynical pseudo-cowboy hipness of the Eagles, but show far less attention to craft. Instead of telling stories and developing ideas, they monger symbols with an aimless abandon that seems downright lazy. This sloppiness is most glaring in his tedious rockers, "Midnight Prowl" and "Black Rose," which lack distinguished tunes. The torch-song lyrics, at least, sound like the authentic musings of a spoiled punk. (RS 214)

STEPHEN HOLDEN