For those who remember the days when Steve Winwood's music was rough, greasy and a little wild, the title track from Roll with It is a tantalizing reminder of what used to be. The toughest, funkiest song Winwood has recorded in years, it features a tight Motown-style rhythm section, blaring horns and a vocal with far more grit and abandon than the singer has shown on his last several records. "Roll with It," the single, is the sound of Steve Winwood being exciting, but most of Roll with It, the album, is the sound of Steve Winwood being boring.

To give Winwood his due, though, he's stylishly, likably boring – the perfect artist for veteran rock & roll fans who remember the fabulous Sixties, don't really want to admit to being New Age fans but aren't comfortable putting anything too abrasive or experimental into their CD players. Steve Winwood might be the perfect yup-rock artist: he's got the history, the chops, the voice, the impeccable digital sound, everything it takes to please the big chillers and thirtysomethings in the albumbuying public, which is generally far older than it was back when Winwood was rawer and more adventurous.

That is not to say that Roll with It sounds like a strictly commercial calculation. Since 1977, when Winwood began his solo career, he has been making similar albums, tasteful and intermittently danceable soft-rock records occasionally spiced by edgier rock and R&B elements. The prototype, 1980's Arc of a Diver, had a lovely, seamless mood from start to finish; the commercial watershed, 1986's Back in the High Life, was uneven but contained a couple of attractive, mildly exciting singles that pushed it over the top commercially. The new album is more of the same.

Certainly, this isn't the kind of career you'd have expected from the seventeen-year-old Ray Charles devotee who screamed out the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" in 1965 or even from the dogged experimentalist who steered Traffic through years of pop, rock, folk and jazz flights and then linked up with eccentrics like Bonzo Dog Band mastermind Vivian Stanshall and Japanese composer Stomu Yamashta. But from the early Seventies on, Winwood has shown a clear fondness for lengthy, atmospheric passages and vague conceits; his current music simply takes those tendencies and puts them in radio-ready settings.

At his best, Winwood can make that blend produce imaginatively crafted pop music. "Roll with It," certainly, is a terrific, punchy rock song – and it ought to be, since from Winwood's vocal tone to the use of sax as a solo instrument, it's essentially a rewrite of Jr. Walker's "Shotgun." "Hearts on Fire," a collaboration with Winwood's former Traffic colleague Jim Capaldi, is almost as lively, with a punchy synthesized bass line and a real kick from the Memphis Horns. And the elegant ballad "One More Morning" is as lovely as anything Winwood has done since Arc of a Diver.

The rest of the record mixes nicely arranged ballads ("The Morning Side," "Don't You Know What the Night Can Do?") with peppier dance rock ("Holding On," "Put On Your Dancing Shoes," "Shining Song"). But too much of it is rock by rote: familiar medium-tempo grooves, recycled motifs from previous hits like "Higher Love," undernourished melodies padded out into five- and six-minute songs. Though Winwood is hardly the first youthful Sixties phenom to turn into a cautious professional – his Blind Faith colleague Eric Clapton has spent years as just that – too much of his music has become complacent and insubstantial.

Maybe Winwood knows he's coasting – after all, Roll with It is an album full of songs about coasting. The lyrics talk of making it through a long, dark night into the soft light of morning and extol the virtues of relaxing and letting things take their course: if the album has a credo, it's as simple as "Roll with it, baby/Hang on and just/Roll with it, baby." And for about half its length, the album shows that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with sitting back and going with the flow. But it wouldn't hurt if once in a while Steve Winwood stood up and rocked the boat. (RS 532)

STEVE POND