The great Kansas controversy rages on. Are these guys the best synthesizers of Americana since Velveeta cheese or the biggest phonies west of Philadelphia? Starting with the first album's liner-note manifesto, Kansas has described its music as daring and original in quasi-mystical jargon such as "a fusion of energy and serenity, a melting pot of ideas." Nice sentiment, but no cigar—because this band is just an American version of the Moody Blues and Emerson, Lake and Palmer: "serious" music that turns up its nose at rock & roll's expressiveness and substitutes bombast for emotion. Kansas acts like a populist group, which means it serves up pretension without glitter or a fake British accent, but that's hardly a cause for celebration.

Monolith might as well be a Moody Blues record, right down to its non sequitur science-fiction-concept cover. Except that one Moody Blues was enough. Kerry Livgren's songs continue to explore the outer limits of rock solipsism in a self-consciously arty atmosphere. The LP's opener, "On the Other Side," finds Livgren staring at an empty page waiting for his muse to zap him. He finally decides to write about belief. Still, he dodges: "And if I seem too inconclusive/It's just because it's so elusive." Ugh.

Actually, Livgren's compositions have fairly memorable melodic hooks. It doesn't matter where he got them, since rock songwriting is a borrower's medium anyway, but it's silly of him to expect us to vouch for the originality of "People of the South Wind" and "A Glimpse of Home." With different lyrics and a ruthless editing of those wedding-cake arrangements, both might have been good numbers. Livgren can't be saddled with all the blame, however. When he turns the writing over to Steve Walsh, the band starts sounding like Black Sabbath ("How My Soul Cries Out for You," Monolith's production extravaganza).

It wouldn't take a miracle or a Great Plains twister to bring Kansas back to earth, though. Just a little old-fashioned humility. (RS 299)

JOHN SWENSON