Over the years, as Joan Baez's voice has matured, it has lost much of its bel canto perfection. But to me its new maturity, bearing forth an innate expressiveness, is ample compensation for what time has taken away. Baez is now where Sinatra was at the end of the Forties, only in his maturity Sinatra was content to explore a doomed romanticism petering out toward jaded sophistication. Not Joan. She forges on, the proud romantic, her artistry becoming at once more personal and more universal.

This is far and away Joan Baez's finest post-folk album; it is all the more exciting because six of its 12 cuts are original Baez songs. What one hoped for, but didn't quite dare to expect, has occurred. She has come into her own as a songwriter with a style that is uniquely hers. What was foreshadowed in "Sweet Sir Galahad," "David's Song," and "Blessed Are" here reaches fruition: Sweeping folk-lullaby melodies that are simple yet distinctive, and lyrics that, though often very sentimental, are incredibly honest and plainly delivered.

Social consciousness, the dominant theme of the album, takes up six cuts, all but one of which are good. The best of these is "Prison Trilogy," an original Baez song that accumulates many powerful specific images before making its final statement ("And we're gonna raze, raze the prisons to the ground"). The worst, also a Baez original, is "To Bobby," a mawkish plea to Dylan to rejoin the movement ("Do you hear the voices in the night, Bobby/They're crying for you/See the children in the morning light, Bobby/They're dying"). Two songs inspired by contemporary events are "Bangladesh" (by Joan, not George) and "The Partisan" (dedicated to "Melina Mercouri and the many thousands suffering under and fighting against the current Greek dictatorship").

The album's finest cuts, however, have little to do with social issues. Perhaps because we are not used to hearing Joan on the subject of herself, it is her two personal songs of painful self-recognition that go the deepest. "Love Song to a Stranger" is the album's masterpiece, the most moving single cut she has ever recorded. In it she takes a favorite Kristofferson theme, love on the run, and completely outdistances Kris.

How long since I've spent a whole night in a twin bed with a stranger, his warm arms all around me

How long since I've gazed into dark eyes that melted my soul down to a place where it longed to be?

All of your history has little to do with your face;

You're mainly a mystery with violins filling in space.

Equally personal and almost as powerful is "Myths," in which Joan sadly acknowledges the failure of her marriage.

Neither of us knew what the future would bring.

We only know that now there's some room to talk and sing.

The baby laughs a lot and that's the most important thing

And as soon as we can handle the hurt and pain

There may be more than just happy memories to gain.

Also notable is Mimi Farina's eulogy to Janis Joplin, "In the Quiet Morning," which concludes with a joyous la-la-la chorus.

The arrangements on Come From the Shadows are better than those on Blessed Are, a record whose many merits were outweighed by its excessive length. The sound here is still highly polished Nashville, but more varicolored, with a greater infusion of strings and chorus. It is the most successful sound backing Joan has yet assembled.

A lot of cynics have already dismissed Joan as naive or irrelevant, given her institutionalized status. She is neither. She merely suffers from the familiarity-breeds-contempt media syndrome. That is unfair. An urgent message can only be put over if it is stated directly out of passionate conviction. Few artists have either the will or the resources to do it. Joan Baez is one of the few with both. (RS 111)

STEPHEN HOLDEN