The title is apt, even hopeful, assuming the monikers Paul and Grace have taken for themselves indicate an increased disposition towards self-satire. The Baron is suitably Germanic: militant, didactic, metapolitical; he even, God help us, promulgates vague doctrines on racial origin. The Chrome Nun, true to her label, has always been inaccessible, chaste (despite her famous daring of convention), metallic, as shrill as a penny-whistle. Various anatomical renderings on the cover, revealing skeleton and muscle, elevate Paul and Grace from stereotype to archetype. David Freiberg, 1973's ersatz Marty Balin, contributes two melodies, no lyrics, one lead vocal, several Mellotron tracks, and co-produces. His modest efforts do not upset the album's conjugal symmetry.

In some ways Paul and Grace embody a classic malefemale dichotomy. Paul's songs are typically external, involved with events and accomplishments; Grace's are more self-absorbed, attentive to psychological processes. Neither, however, is very sweet-tempered; only Paul tends to take on nations and movements, whereas Grace's darts are aimed at individuals. Despite their different tunings, they clearly stoke each other's anger; only when victory is smelled, as on "Sketches Of China" (this album's "We Can Be Together"), do they experience release. In the isolation a modicum of wealth and success can buy, Paul's and Grace's humid sci-fi and political speculations proliferate unpruned.

Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun in its choice of musicians does not venture outside of a small circle of friends. John Barbata of the Airplane drums, Casady and omnipresent sessionman Chris Ethridge play bass. A really excellent guitarist named Craig Chaquico sounds a great deal like Jorma, and it is his angular, fidgety guitar which provides the sole interest in Jack Taylor's history of revolution in five stanzas, "Flowers of the Night," which is stirring in the way "As the Caissons Go Rolling Along" is stirring. On "Your Mind Has Left Your Body," Paul's essay on teleportation, Jorma's seething guitar spars nicely with Jerry Garcia's pedal steel. But this is Jorma's only appearance, and it is Jerry's milder six-string which threads through most of the record.

"Your Mind Has Left Your Body" is a tale of psychic cosmic regression to the time when "the earth was formed." Kantner's singing is curiously earthbound and leaden, although in all fairness the lyrics, "And if you can fasten on that moment/And expand through the afterglow/You can reverse your mind in time," are almost unsingable. Grace's "Fat" also deals with teleportation, less theoretically but just as cryptically. The song is as focused as a laser and is easily the best thing on the album.

"Across The Board," another of her songs, has a dazzling opening line, "Somebody aimed you when you were young/But nobody ever fired," then quickly turns into a rant; by the third stanza she's shrieking. Grace has as much personal contempt for the helpless as ideological hatred for the powerful and wicked. Beginning with "Somebody To Love," she has often pointed her adder's tongue at the weak and repressed. Nor does she seem to be capable of being anything but sarcastic about sex. Even "Fishman," which purports to be a love song, is atavistic and grotesque. Only "The Ballad of the Chrome Nun," which Grace sings well, good-naturedly rocks like the old 'Plane. "Walkin'," a square dance which could have been a real, if trivial, respite is invaded by Grace's trailerpark hiss.

No, unfortunately the contents of this album fit the caricature of the title. The intensity with which Kantner and Slick put forward their feelings and beliefs makes them that much more thunderingly irrelevant. Grace would seem intelligent enough to see Kantner's bloated rhetoric for what it is, but inevitably she has assimilated some of it. More regrettably, her own demons get more and more aggravated in such an atmosphere. She is now reportedly working on a long-awaited solo album which could clear the air. In the meantime, her talents must be measured in projects like this. Such are the wages of partnership. (RS 142)

BEN GERSON