If Leo Sayer's first two albums were only intermittently wonderful, both displayed more than enough promise to make Another Year, his third, one of the biggest disappointments of 1975. Silverbird and Just a Boy cannily combined Blue Period sadness with the bright ferocity of youth: and Sayer's impassioned, idiosyncratic vocals ofttimes deliberately burned through the careful, melancholic pose of the crushed innocent. There is nothing like a little cosmic hopelessness when the artist is so clearly brimming over with hope, however wistfully he may wish to present it. For the most part, Year escalates these coordinated mood changes into arid pockets of forced gloom or fits of clichéd frenzy. As a result, Sayer seems less a hardy, elegiac romantic than an incendiary wimp.

Why? Sayer is a singer and lyricist only; until this LP, David Courtney, who coproduced two albums with Adam Faith, wrote all of the music. Since only Courtney is missing from the new record, he now appears to have been the early hero. Either Frank Farrell, his replacement as composer, or Russ Ballard, the new coproducer, would seem to be Year's likely villain. The singer himself doesn't help much. Far too often, he forgoes his once electrifying individuality to plug into the Elton John socket.

Whereas the Courtney-Faith team managed to both illuminate and control Sayer's inventive duality, the Farrell-Faith-Ballard troupe comes up empty. Dramatic understatement has metamorphosed into the kind of strenuous, melodramatic overkill that draws attention to its own quasi-cleverness. "Moonlighting," a Springsteen-like anthem about a pair of runaway lovers, fails because its excellent lyrics cannot overcome the gratuitous freneticism of the arrangement. "On the Old Dirt Road" allows the singer to sound like an aggressive simpleton, while "Only Dreaming" seems to pit Ian Matthews and Alice Cooper in absurd, schizophrenic combat. "The Last Gig of Johnny B. Goode" is mere cheap-shot agony; better by only half are "Bedsitterland" and the title song. "I Will Not Stop Fighting" fails totally in its bid to emulate "Giving It All Away," Sayer's masterpiece from the second I.P.

All is not lost, however. Sayer sings the intense and moving "Unlucky in Love," a real heartbreaker, with piledriving sincerity. The song is one of his best, as is the Ewan MacColl-influenced "Streets of Your Town," a sad, near silent requiem for the young and old in small towns everywhere. Farrell-Faith-Ballard are impeccable here.

Leo Sayer needs to do some strong thinking about his future, which should be limitless. He was one step away from stardom before Another Year. He is still one step away. (RS 201)

PAUL NELSON