John Denver - Spirit • CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

appreciation of his own true love, and the latter, fired up by those same strings, a monstrously heroic victory march right through the cosmos to the far reaches of Warbling Heights. The album's best song, "Baby, You Look Good to Me Tonight," attracts almost as a curiosity. In it, we find Mr. Clean on the road, cajoling a "local angel" into a one-night stand. In Denver's context, this is risqué and finally becomes — when he sings, "Thought I must be in a dream/When she asked me if I wanted cream"—positively pornographic. Jamming the words together with Dylanesque density and a chorus almost identical to "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" clinch the accidental appeal.

Denver continues to regale us with tales of old-fashioned joys and the True American Spirit (as indicated, perhaps, by banjo fills) and to point proudly to the bounty of his own guileless ("Far out!") glee. But John Denver remains insipid: as efficient as any prefab Swiss chalet in the Colorado mountains and just as inappropriate. (RS 223)

ROBERT DUNCAN