Carousel Corner.

"A waist is a terrible thing to mind." (Anonymous)

It is the privilege of the long of tooth to rant frothily over the excesses of the young just as it is the obligation of the young to rage against the self-congratulatory smugness of their elders. And just as surely as rock'n'roll is the language of anger and rebellion, its practitioners, once the sweaty, pimply idols of the glandular-challenged, have, well, gotten older, gone gray with age -- forgotten for the most part what it was like to be totally clueless. As simple an enterprise as getting laid was the objective of endless scheming, romantic dreams, and testosteronic bravado. Its lack and/or failure wrought brooding deliberations, illicit spirits, and thinly disguised metaphors -- homage all to towers unscaled and bridges uncrossed. It is indeed the province of the young to feel isolated, unaccepted, and unloved -- the powerful stuff of rock'n'roll. And once you have earned acceptance and discovered the joys of carnal delights, your energies turn toward other priorities: family, community, work. Bottom line? If I were Zack de La Rocha, I'd absolutely detest the very idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Rock's graybeards face an unenviable challenge: somehow maintain the razor-sharp wariness of youth while facing up to the reality that one is older, perhaps wiser, hopefully hipper to the world and the inexorable ticking of the clock. Some have trod the path gracefully (Ringo, Dion, and Aretha come to mind). Others have refused to quit: Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Chuck Berry. Still others are passing with a mixture of defiance (Springsteen, Mellencamp) and bursts of renewed creativity (Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt).

Then there are those who are confronting the phenomenon -- and they are largely the subjects of this month's column. With the exception of one scion of a rock legend, each artist or act is confronting the hump decade (40-50), each with markedly different and mixed results.

Everything But The Girl, Temperamental (Atlantic)

Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn ply a style that is wholly dependent on Watt's ability to program multiple electronic music and percussion sources and Thorn's sultry, evocative vocals. After several albums varying styles and success, Everything But The Girl took a sudden and unexpected turn into the vagaries of electronica with 1994's Amplified Heart and seems to have found its niche with subtly crafted melodies and smart lyrics. Temperamental follows Heart and Walking Wounded (1996) with cityscapes burnished by Watt's reverberant footfall metaphors: "I drag the city late at night/it's in my mouth/it's in my hair" ("Five Fathoms") juxtaposed with a uniquely threatening British suburbia: "shopping bags and broken glass/I hate going thru the underpass/we'll have to go thru the deserted shopping center I'm seeing my first knife/my first ambulance ride" ("Hatfield 1980").

Watt's, and sometimes Thorn's -- he shoulders the bulk of the writing -- characters wander like nomads, emotionally stranded in their bleak milieux: "you're like an empty cup" ("Temperamental"); or "you watch the phone like it was a TV" ("No Difference"); or the eternal refuge "I saw you standing at the bar/Don't know your name or who you are/are you on your own?/I'm into you/When are you going home?" (Lullaby of Clubland"). Watt provides deft Euro/techno/dance soundtracks for his itinerants, weaving drum machines, synthesizers, and samplers around Thorn's voice. Despite all of the seeming complexity, the result is sparse like the early morning soundscape it describes. Watt is so wedded to the electronics that even natural sounds like a gently rolling surf or even Thorn's voice are sampled, processed, and recycled into the mix.

Rock purists have decried electronic gear for what seems like a generation, squalling that a drum machine can't replicate the feel of a live practitioner -- and in a sense they're right. Everything But The Girl has embraced the impure, however, and manufactured a contrasting mix of artificial sound and Thorn's bewitching performances into a rock experience that feels like techno and dance, but renders a depth that many rock purists envy.

The Wallflowers, (Breach) (Interscope)

It's almost impossible to refrain from comparing Jakob Dylan's songwriting with that of his legendary father. And, frankly, it suffers by even the kindest of comparisons. It seems, though, that the point of The Wallflowers, and their second disc, (Breach), is that they're of this generation not another, and have their own turf to stake out. Dylan's writing is, well, pedestrian. Metaphors are awkwardly fashioned: some seem contrived for historical effect ("Cupid don't draw back your bow/Sam Cooke didn't know what I know" -- "Sleepwalker") and others for recognition ("It may take two to tango/But boy, just one to let go" -- "Letters from the Wasteland").

However, like their debut, Bring Down the Horse, (Breach) is decent, even good, rock and roll. The songs are adorned with homages to the late '70s and early '80s rockers that served as Dylan's listening education: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, U2, Mellencamp, Randy Newman, Springsteen and the E Street Band. Moreover, Dylan seems to have resisted the temptation to gin his sound up with hip-hop -- there's nary a rapper or turntable in sight. The Wallflowers (Rami Jaffee on keyboards, Greg Richling on bass, Michael Ward on guitar, and Mario Calire on drums) are an excellent band, which doesn't shy from accepting the mantle of heartland rock's inheritors, dutifully passed on by today's graybeards: Petty, Mellencamp, and Springsteen (yeah, dig it, boys and girls: Bruce is 51). (Breach) is an excellent second album from a promising band, one which is expected, and hasn't so far, to do something astonishing. But to Dylan's credit, he's also eschewing his father's heritage: there's no beat poetry, social commentary, or entwined saga. But every once in a while, much like Julian Lennon and Chris Stills, especially on "Up From Under", you hear a distinctive voice -- there's another mantle, draped on a kitchen chair, never far away.

Madonna, Music (Maverick/Warner Bros.)

After umpteen albums and two children, one would have thought that Madonna, now on the wrong side of 40, had finally had enough of pop megastardom, and would be content to walk prams in Hyde Park and keep her clothes on for a change. Not so. Madonna, whose relentless thirst for the spotlight is at least equal to her considerable talent, has remade herself yet again. Music is less Madonna as image and more Madonna as singer, a pose she's artfully evaded since I'm Breathless, although there is an image there -- how could there not be? As Music's pre-release publicity machine whirred into gear, a ten-gallon-hatted, rhinestone-studded Madonna graced the media, prompting speculation that this conversion was at a Nashville altar, and perhaps she'd taken a radical turn from the dance pop staples that marked her career. Not so, again.

Music, like Everything But The Girl's recent productions, is almost pure programming and voice. There's some semblance of an actual band on a couple of songs, "Amazing" and "Gone," but the bulk of the disc springs from the imagination of French DJ and producer Mirwais Ahmadzai. Madonna and Ahmadzai pick up where they left off with 1998's Ray of Light and the title cut: "Hey Mr. DJ/Put a record on/I wanna dance with my baby/When the music starts/I never wanna stop/It's gonna drive me crazy." Music finds her expectedly unapologetic for her personas, career, and personal choices: her impending marriage elicits the low-key "Cool I am/ When I am with you/Cool I'm not/When I am lonely" from "Runaway Lover." Perhaps a realization that she's on life's downslide produces the seductively beautiful "I Deserve It:" "Not running from the past/I tried to do what's best/I know that I deserve it/Many miles many roads I have traveled/Fallen down on the way/Many hearts many years have unraveled/Leading up to today." Finally, anticipating the legions of critics, who are of course louder and more strident than her supporters, she states "Selling out/Is not my thing/ Walk away/I won't be broken again/I'm not/I'm not what you think/Dream away your life/ Someone else's dream/Nothing/Equals nothing" ("Gone").

For all of the bravado of "Music," Music is decidedly gentler, and perhaps genuinely reflective, than Madonna's usual staple of tarted-up, sweaty, frenetic dance pop. And if her songwriting skills were ever in doubt, the lovely melodies of "I Deserve It" and "Gone" should dispel those notions for good. Music is not your mama's Madonna, nor is it a token of today's mainstream. However, it is a mature work from a mature artist, who will always surprise, and who will seldom disappoint.

Sting, Brand New Day (A&M)

Gordon "Sting" Sumner, like Dave "The Edge" Evans and Saul "Slash" Hudson, has one of the more intriguing noms de rock -- a moniker that evokes the dangerous, revolutionary, even violent genesis of rock's 'tude: doo-wop street quartets, juke joint cutting contests, and the virulent, lathered, angst-riddled fury that is its hallmark. And for a guy who punched his way into rock's consciousness with a faux reggae paean to a hooker with one of the most innovative bands of the late '70s, Sting's current incarnation embodies anything but the fusionary anger that drove The Police, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and other Brit punk icons. Compared to the unrepentant Lou Reed or Joe Strummer (see last ish), Sting has become a kinder, gentler version of himself, a domesticated, textural tunesmith whose initial solo offerings suggested a mature songwriting vision, but whose latest output suggests some who is just plain tired and can't quite let go.

Brand New Day is respectable MOR pop. Indeed, there is nothing patently offensive about the album. It has a couple of catchy melodies, "Desert Rose" and "After the Rain Has Fallen," but it lacks the focus and drive that marked Dream of the Blue Turtles or Nothing Like the Sun. Sting's affinity for exotic rhythms, absent from the darkly lit The Soul Cages or Ten Summoner's Tales, is briefly resurrected with "Desert Rose," but the balance of the disc, even interrupted by a French rap in "Perfect Love Gone Wrong," hovers on the edge of lite jazz, the province of Russ Freeman, Fourplay, or David Benoit. Oh, lest we get carried away, there are a few bright moments. "Fill Her Up" charges out of the gate a high-octane fueled black-top boogie, replete with an edgy pedal steel guitar, but it is resolved in the sort of dreamy, balsamic dross that infects too much of this disc. The title finale is perky and upbeat. Ironically, its opening bars spring virtually intact from Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her" while Wonder plies his harmonica in the background. Occasionally Sting finds his trademark vocal octave, but the years have knocked it down a peg or two.

Brand New Day is probably not the resurgent breakthrough that Sting needs at this point in his career, however improbably it was thrust into the public light by Jaguar's use of "Desert Rose" a full year after its release. It is reminiscent of the wonderful ironies that greeted Bring on the Night: backed by an impressive band of jazz wunderkinder (Branford Marsalis, Omar Hakim, Kenny Kirkland, and Daryl Jones), Sting commented that he'd played "jazz" before as a youngster in a Dixieland band. In the same vein, he used to be a punk rocker in his bleach blond youth in a power trio. Indeed, when one is stung by a wasp, one swells painfully, but the wasp, shorn of his weapon, wanders off to die. Unlike renewable noms de rock like "The Edge" and "Slash," one wonders if Sting hasn't been depleted of his potency.

U2, All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope)

'80s glamour boys and arguably the decade's most potent band, U2, with an oblique success like Zooropa and an abject failure like Pop under its belt, stammered and stumbled through the '90s, having lost, somewhat ironically, their edge. All That You Can't Leave Behind is another attempt at semi-Jurassic resurrection. U2 enlisted Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, two very different personages, to apparently co-produce. Eno is the brash experimenter, who plucks strands of genius from his subjects' often unwitting souls. Lanois on the other hand is the master of ambience, whose often-heavy hand casts a layer of cobwebby translucence, stamping his subjects' work as much with his own identity as theirs. Each song credits Lanois and Eno in that order. However, the sound lacks Lanois' trademark bayou mist. My guess is that, like the Beatles' calling in Phil Spector for Let It Be, U2 called Eno in to "save" Lanois's production. But that's only a guess. Nonetheless, from these disparate approaches the sound that emerges from All That You Can't Leave Behind is a whole that is less than the sum of its parts.

Unlike the surging, urgent drive of their '80s output, culminating in the brilliant The Joshua Tree, Leave Behind is a series of mostly slow- to mid-tempo ponderings on life's small favors and major disappointments. Leave Behind opens with "Beautiful Day," a puzzling juxtaposition of breathless hope and arid fatigue, which segues into "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," a feckless discourse from one lover who's outgrown another: "And you're such a fool/To worry like you do/I know it's tough, and you can never get enough/Of what you don't really need now." Bono, the once and forever Mephisto wrapped in holy garb, oozes fleeing charm: "You've got to get yourself together/ You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it/Don't say that later will be better."

Still, there are rockers such as "Elevation" and "Wild Honey," both of which could be love songs, but in Bono's clumsy hands one's not quite sure if he's down and dirty with a groupie (i.e., sinning) or simply kneeling in rapt adoration (i.e., not sinning). But even a simple love song to a missed child ("In a Little While") is tethered with salvation's overtones: "Slow down my beating heart/A man dreams one day to fly/A man takes a rocket ship into the skies/ He lives on a star that's dying in the night/And follow in the trail, the scatter of light." There has ever been more than a hint of self-conscious piety about U2, as if the best-worn-on-the-sleeve faith of the band's three avowed Christians (Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen, Jr.) allowed them to preach as much as sin. When they were much younger, one forgave U2 the genuflecting exuberance of "Gloria" if only because the proselytizing was wrapped in an astonishingly novel sound, at once spare yet thick with The Edge's stereo echo. However, now Bono's cosmic angst is merely tedious. One wants to shake the band by its collective lapels and scream, "Enough! Grow up already!"

Part of growing up is moving beyond childlike awe and gaping acceptance of the grim line between life and death. Indeed, Bono croons: "Something's about to give/I can feel it coming/I think I know what it means/I'm not afraid to die/I'm not afraid to live/And when I'm flat on my back/I hope to feel like I did" ("Kite"). What he doesn't get yet is that the other part of growing up is setting aside the endless contemplation of one's own death. In a sense, he is afraid to live. In a broader sense, that fear entraps all of All That You Can't Leave Behind.

XTC, Apple Venus (TVT), Wasp Star (TVT)

And then there are some who can't figure out what they want to be when they grow up, and seem to be slaphappy poking right along. Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding, two studio mavens from post-punk's new wave outpouring, are firmly entrenched in the style that wrought Drums and Wires, English Settlement, and later Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons lo so many years past. Apple Venus and Wasp Star, aptly subtitled Apple Venus, Volume II, are two perfectly lovely, melodious albums, chock full of the studio fastidiousness and lilting pop sensibilities that have stood by them for, well, lo these many years. Delightfully nicking the quirky rhythms and serendipitous song structures of the Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, XTC, along with fellow travelers 10CC, drew their inspiration from the language's riches and children's songs, eschewing difficult issues for the hard-earned pun or the elegant rhyme. Their classic songs, "Making Plans for Nigel," "Senses Working Overtime," and "Dear God" deftly mixed wry humor and a trenchant view of British class structure into a body of work as redolent of Ray Davies' sly wink as the great pop highway ribbon-cut by the Fab Four.

A small trickle of water leads into "River of Orchids," Apple Venus's remarkable opening track. A gently loping string section is punctuated by syncopated horns over which Partridge's staccato vocal thrusts claim yet a third rhythmic structure. Partridge's "I Like That" is classic XTC -- a chunky acoustic guitar propels against the bass and a solitary kick drum as Partridge croons a simple love song: "I'd like that/If we could cycle down a lane/ I'd be your Albert/If you'd be my Victoria," evoking the mythic, idyllic 19th-century English countryside. Tossed off metaphors ("chocolate nipple brown" -- "Easter Theatre") compete with unsubtle puns ("Knights in Shining Karma") in a continuous aural candyscape, blatant ear confection at its decadent best. Once again, wit abounds: "H-A-T-E/Is that how you spell love in your dictionary?" ("Your Dictionary" -- which includes a number of definitions that cannot be printed in a family magazine). And of course the eternal poke at the middle class can't be left out: "Let us talk of something trivial/Things we like/A bit of this and that/Let's chew the fat" ("Frivolous Tonight").

Wasp Star is no less rewarding. XTC adopts a harder edge -- the electric guitars absent from Apple Venus steal center stage with a vengeance. Wasp Star opens with "Playground," evoking the rite of elementary school passage and the emotional scars that it can inflict if one isn't careful: "School is out but never over/That's the only lesson you can learn." Similarly, "Stupidly Happy" conjures the first blush of an adolescent crush: "And should the Devil drive up/With his business card out/I'd tear it to confetti/ With a grin I'd shout/Stupidly happy/All of the time/Stupidly happy/Now you're mine." All is not posies as the permanently dark theater in "Boarded Up" ("Yeah, we're nailed up shut/Two by four-ded up") awaits progress's demolition: "Making way for a superstore plot/Some town planner didn't know when to stop."

Eventually, the elation of "Stupidly Happy" turns sour; "I'm the Man Who Murdered Love" boasts "There'll be no more pain from broken hearts/And no more lovers to be torn apart/Before you throw me in your dungeon dark/Your honour, they'll be putting statues up/In every park." Even stalwart friendship takes a wicked turn: "As darkness falls/ And I turn out his bedroom light/Who could resist her tender charms/So the story goes/This actor plays all the parts/Standing in for Joe" ("Standing in for Joe"). Joe shows up in the next song: "Well, I stumbled and I fell/Like a wounded horse/When I found out/You'd been riding another man" ("Wounded Horse").

Apple Venus and Wasp Star are proverbial bookends, the former soft and seductive, the latter jaggedly sharp. Each shares Partridge's and Goulding's alternately ironic and nave personae, forming a resplendent whole. After 23 years of partnership -- both share the wrong side of 40 with the bulk of this month's cast -- they haven't strayed from their marvelous sense of melodic pop. Apple Venus and Wasp Star are as intriguing and listenable as Drums and Wires, no mean achievement in rock's transient, trendy world. And after an afternoon of Richard Thompson's dysfunctional, Dickensian Britain, the grimy detritus of its industrialization, dusk on the veranda with XTC, tea, and scones is the nearly perfect tonic.

E-mail: [e-mail]. Next ish: back to the streets and badass rock'n'roll. --KE