Lone justice had to change. Its 1985 debut revealed an astonishingly mature new band and a blockbuster talent in irrepressible singer and primary songwriter Maria McKee. But in a year when American roots rock was the hip genre of choice, Lone Justice's brash (and accessible) music was shamefully underappreciated. So change it has. The band has been completely overhauled – McKee is one of only two survivors from last year's model – and its country-inflected mainstream rock has been traded in for a modern hybrid that's far more ready for album radio.

The change raises questions about the band's commitment to the country rock it championed last year, but the sheer sonic power of Shelter blasts holes in most of them. On the hard-rocking "I Found Love" and the more deliberately paced, synth-laden single "Shelter" (both co-written by McKee and coproducer Little Steven Van Zandt), the revamped, expanded band scorches with reckless finesse, and McKee's cries and giddy asides are revelatory.

Sometimes the elaborate production gets out of hand – "Beacon" sports enough synthetic percussion to shame a Human League fan – and the sound is similar to that of recent work by coproducer Jimmy Iovine (Simple Minds, Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders). The production is so big that only a voice of McKee's endurance could scale it. And the lyrics, at their best as galvanizing and precise as those on the debut, are at times too general to support the band's controlled thrash. I particularly miss the hardheaded romanticism of songs by departed bassist Marvin Etzioni.

But at the end of each LP side, McKee hushes her sturdy new band and soars. "Wheels" and "Dixie Storms" are quiet, direct and uncluttered – steady-eyed remembrances of discarded love and childhood naiveté that transcend the occasionally overwrought production trick. That Shelter falls short of the debut says more about the unstudied brilliance of the first album than the few shortcomings on this one. (RS 493)

JIMMY GUTERMAN