As nondescript as any group in rock, the Marshall Tucker Band hasn't even been able to parlay its handful of his singles into the kind of middle-level visibility that Charlie Daniels is currently enjoying. Partly, that's because the Tucker tribe lacks a really distinctive frontman, though lead singer Doug Gray and guitarist Toy Caldwell do have some talent. Another reason is the brand of Southern rock that these guys play. Whereas the best Southern groups have always been the most mercurial, the Marshall Tucker Band seldom settles for less-than-pleasant music but rarely stretches to achieve more-than-predictable results.

Thus, Tenth is full of loping tempos reminiscent of "Heard It in a Love Song," all sparingly flavored with Jerry Eubanks' flutes and saxophones. This album is long on corn-pone homilies, lonesome love songs and odd moments of "Sweet Home Alabama"-style, hard-ass Southern pride. Never an annoying mixture, it's by now a disappointingly familiar one, both to Tucker followers and those who simply know the genre's ground rules.

Even the more ambitious compositions play it safe. "Cattle Drive" grafts the LP's most adventurous instrumental passages onto an utterly forgettable Old West number, while "Gospel Singin' Man" swamps Gray's finest vocal beneath a clichéd gospel arrangement. Caldwell's "Save My Soul" is too ordinary a tune to juggle its abrupt dynamic shifts, lengthy coda and ambivalent, almost fatalistic lyrics with any success.

Obviously, blandness counts for something, since the Marshall Tucker Band is still around. But it's also stuck the group in a rut. I can't say that I really look forward to hearing Eleventh. (RS 320)

STEVE POND