Marshall Crenshaw's rock & roll has the kind of crafty simplicity that has to be called classic. Like the Everly Brothers and the early Beatles, he works within a relatively small territory and gains the whole world he's after – that is, the complete attention of anyone who believes that rock & roll can perform magic on himself or herself.

What is that territory? In Crenshaw's case, it's a three-piece band of bass, drums and his own guitar. Except for the rare exception – a touch of glockenspiel or maracas, for example – that proves his rule, those are his limits. He includes handclaps, of course, as well as backing vocals and the kinds of moans and sha-la-las and vocal quavers that not many people since Buddy Holly have had the innocent gutsiness to depend on.

There's another thing about his chosen territory: it's about affairs of the heart. Not cars, clothes or cheeseburgers, not the government, not even mom and dad. It can embrace rock itself as a kind of backdrop ("Rockin' Around in N.Y.C."), and it can even celebrate – unsuccessfully, in this case – "Girls" in the abstract. But mostly it's about a guy, a James Dean-type character who's at once humble and headstrong about his choices in life:

I want to take you with me

I'll do most anything that you want to

When we go out together, we must run wild but first I'm warning you:

I never bother with the usual thing

Don't wanna know about the usual thing....

Perhaps from touring as John Lennon in Beatlemania, Crenshaw's got a voice full of delicate head tones with a hint of that high, lonesome sound. Divorced from his deft singing, the words might seem too self-conscious. But he doubles the vocals in all the right places, using just enough slapback, and it comes out sounding as pure as God's own cherubim come down to earth to play a high-school dance.

No, this isn't Fifties-revival music, Robert Gordon's cover of Crenshaw's "Someday, Someway" notwithstanding. Crenshaw's longed-for "Cynical Girl" is an Eighties creature. But she'll have to hate TV ("There's gotta be somebody other than me/ Who's ready to write it off immediately"), and the ringing, relentless chord pattern he ever-so-melodically uses to yank you through the song makes it clear the guy means business.

There's no point in flogging Crenshaw into the next big thing. But if rock & roll is one of your ongoing joys and redemptions, he's probably the next necessary thing. (RS 369)

FRED SCHRUERS