Like the good-bad characters in its songs, Thin Lizzy is no better than it should be. Catering to the moderate-hard-rock mainstream, the band's music has changed remarkably little over the last five albums: a scrappy, often insouciant blend of cantering melodies, crunching chords and colorful arrangements. If the members of Lizzy are not particularly innovative, they do explore their chosen territory with uncommon flair, polishing their reliable style a little more each year. As a result, Bad Reputation is a fine, solid album.

Songwriter Phil Lynott's lyrics portray a roguish, though God-fearing, Irish soul that is full of heat-lightning dreams that stir his blood at sundown. His ballads are laced with tender and often charming blarney, and his more feisty songs are dashing mini-epics of urban romance. Only when he yields to the temptation of martial swaggering does he begin to resemble the archetypal rock thug.

Such churning tracks as "Opium Trail" and the title cut are the sort of tedious stadium rumblers that turn brains to sawdust. Mercifully, though, this LP concentrates on Lynott's more tuneful sensibilities. "Downtown Sundown" is a honey of a ballad, while "Southbound" and most of side two cruise along in a buoyant, effortless power drive. And "Dancing in the Moonlight," the extraordinary finger-popper with drowsy sax shadings, matches the best of Springsteen or Van Morrison. Throughout the album, Scott Gorham's shivering guitar patterns ice this already rich cake of wax.

Bad Reputation may not be the stuff of legend and it may not hold many suprises, but it does satisfy as a first-rate rock & roll consumer good. (RS 250)

STEPHEN DEMOREST