David Lee Roth used to be the metal cat who ate the canary. His smartass Vegas-on-steroids persona and hopped-up delivery spread a tangy layer of irony over Eddie Va Halen's earnest guitar stroppings; the combo made their band more than the sum of its parts – a riff-rock machine with a brain and a heart.

Roth slinked off in 1985, and Sammy Hagar slipped in. Say what you will about Hagar – at least he's got heart, enough to have propelled Van Halen into a second coming. But under the microscope of his solo-career sampler, Unboxed, Hagar's generic hard-rock arrangements and cars and girls lyrics look as slight as the organisms that dance over cheese. Face it, if Roth had written "I Can't Drive 55," there would be a clever reason: maybe dwarfs in the road or Elle Macpherson hitchhiking.

Hagar belts everything from the soundtrack number "Heavy Metal" to the new, nostalgic "High Hopes" in his familiar, earnest, balls-out yelp. And that's OK. Really. Just not very exciting. The kicks are in his occasional blurts of guitar genius – like the strutting riff that powers "Three Lock Box" and the slippery-fingered solo in "Buying My Way Into Heaven," a televangelist slam that's Unboxed's other fresh biscuit.

After he left Van Halen, Roth resurfaced as the hairy homunculus bastard kid of Brian Wilson and Louis Prima with Crazy From the Heat. Roth regained his senses in '86 and put Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan and Gregg Bissonette behind him. Through two albums and a tour, they were music's equivalent of a Sean Connery, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme tag team.

Now, Roth's re-entry into three-ring rock proves he was that group's Van Damme. It's not that his lyrics are standard meathead fare – although for half these 14 songs they are – but that his new stuff's as boring as watching worms mate. Cars, girls, a "Big Train" as a metaphor for life – compelling, especially paired with glorified shuffles, boogies and other crafty blues-rock turns. Shit, with its slide guitar, laconic singin' and female backing vocals, "Hey, You Never Know" sounds like ol' Skynyrd. Two bright spots: "Sunburn," a spare doodle of a sultry summer city afternoon that ever so lightly swings, and the cynical but clever sigh of "Experience."

Trouble is, Roth just can't go it alone, and his current guitar foil and frequent songwriting partner, Terry Kilgore, doesn't bring much more to the table than a knife and a fork. Which leaves slim pickin's for the rest of us. (RS 685)

TED DROZDOWSKI