Robert Palmer's blond good looks, British hauteur and stylistic eclecticism make him a critical sitting duck, and he's often dismissed as a dandy and a dilettante. Though he may be both (so's Mick Jagger), Palmer is also a strong but not devastating vocalist, a versatile songwriter and a capable producer. An intelligent student of American R&B, this artist has never imitated American black singers outright. Instead, he fuses sinuous R&B phrasing and high-voltage vocal tension with his own cultivated diction. The result, as Secrets demonstrates, is a very adaptable style.

A lean, tough album of transatlantic hard rock, Secrets seems as much influenced by recent Rolling Stones music as by the West Indian rhythms Palmer is forever fiddling with. In "What's It Take?", "In Walks Love Again," "Mean Old World" and "Too Good to Be True," the singer expertly blends different Caribbean, funk grooves into a hard-rock setting. The rhythms are taut and propulsive, the textures very dry. When Palmer overdubs his own voice, the results are deliberately unpretty. Throughout, there's little soloing from his five-piece band and hardly any sweetening beyond some keyboard frills. Secrets' most commercial song, Moon Martin's "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)," has been cannily cast as a Steve Miller-style highway anthem.

Academically, everything works. Technically, Secrets is impeccable, but it's too dispassionate to achieve the ominous resonance Palmer wants. Robert Palmer has brains, manners and talent. Now, if he only had a heart. (RS 300)

STEPHEN HOLDEN