scorching riffs. “Lonely as it tempers the raucous energy of the latter with soulful blues. Pat McManus’ fiddle blends a mournful, uncertainty into the tune, as unexpected and effective as finding a Mike Bloomfield track on Judas Priest. “In The Heat Of The Night” returns to the hard stuff, with lyrics like “Living it up/Tearing it down/we're going crazy cause we're out of bounds” shot like bullets out of an electric storm. Tommy McManus makes his cymbals scream and his listeners wonder how many Paistes he's made Into donuts. More than metalheads will appreciate this power- packed LP. intertwined with fire and frenzy are words and riffs you can actually hear. Mama's Boys are sons of tradi- tional Irish folk musicians, and their earliest gigs catered to Cajun tunes and jigs. Even with a turn- about to hard rock, Mama's Boys don’t sacrifice the quality of their melody to thunder and chaos, as do some of their metal competitors. Instead they show the depth and diversity of metal at its best. This LP convinced this critic to keep an open mind to hard rock, and to keep Mama’s Boys spinning steadily on the turntable. —Brooke Sheffield Comer ROGER WATERS ‘The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (Columbia/CBS) DAVID GILMOUR ‘About Face (Columbia/CBS) These two pieces of the Pink Floyd jigsaw puzzle 58 FACES —Iyricistivocalistichief- conceptualist Waters and lead guitarist Gilmour— récently released their first solo works in years at roughly the same time. The albums have less in common with each other than they do with Pink Floyd, creating an in- teresting disparity when considered in the agoniz- ingly rich context of Pink Floyd's albums. Gilmour's effort is the more tuneful and light: weight of the two. His voice is certainly silkier than Waters’, but less ex- pressive. Coupled with his and (on two songs) Pete Townshend's uninspired lyrics, the album is sur- prisingly flat. Gilmour's in- strumental arrangements redeem About Face to a great extent—notwith- standing some blatant Jackson Browne swipes— and the album is a pretty and pleasant throwaway. Its saving grace is in reminding us who makes Waters’ dark Floyd visions palatable enough not to ‘tum away from. Waters, on his own, proves less frightening than one would imagine. His scope is as big as ‘ever—Hitch Hiking is an allegory of life-travel—but he holds out hope at the end, rather than that sick- ness-unto-death, despair Hitch Hiking is, in fact, indred spirit with Bruce Springsteen and beat- novelist Jack Kerouac. “The road is life,” wrote ramblin’ Jack, and Spring- steen rhapsodizes on fac- ing up to the darkness (taking risks) and driving ‘out of town (leaving the secure, spiritually unful- filling life to reach for your dreams). There are no conventional songs on Waters’ album. Rather, each side is a suite with few aural or metaphorical holes. Side one revolves around courtship and mating/marriage; side two trips through the phases of family, separation’ divorce, fucking around and finally settling for someone or something just good enough to cut through the loneliness and form a wall against despair. Compare this outlook to Springsteen's Nebraska, for instance, or The River, where deferred and forgotten dreams are the price one pays to survive. Of the two albums, Waters’ sounds more like Pink Floyd, with even quest guitarist Eric Clap- ton substituting standard Floyd sustained-notes for his own chugging-blues style. To ears accustomed to Waters integrated with the rest of the band, Hitch Hiking sounds incom- plete, though. Gilmour's tunefulness would have gone a long way toward making this meditation more hummable. Regard less, if you're used to a. diet of live-fast-die-young, Hitch Hiking brings up some of the unpleasant possibilities you might have to face if by some chance you survive. —Frank Lovece