Like the inflated balloon that whisked Dorothy and Toto into Oz, Kansas continues its heady ascent into the free space provided by the ever-expanding art-rock market. The key to success for this group is that it plays the same kind of music as Yes and Genesis, but its members are average mid-westerners instead of inaccessible British pop stars. This finally paid off with Kansas' fourth album, Leftoverture, which produced the band's first hit single, "Carry on Wayward Son."

Understandably, the followup tries to duplicate the hit formula: the songs are shorter, the hooks more condensed, the general sound more hard-rock oriented than since the first Kansas album. It seems to work, although the added songs only serve to stretch overextended lyric ideas even thinner. The pompous sentiment expressed in virtually all Kansas songs is a wan and ridiculous rehash of the bargain-basement exoticism employed by the British art-rock crowd. The band's strength is in the purposefulness of its ensemble playing, because there isn't a virtuoso soloist on board. Keyboardist Steve Walsh's Keith Emerson Rick Wakeman imitations provide most of the single-line excitement, and his capsule presentation of the first Emerson, Lake & Palmer album, "The Spider," almost gets to the point where it sounds like there's something going on. But the whole thing is unsettling—I have a feeling we're not in rock & roll. (RS 256)

JOHN SWENSON