Carousel Corner.(the aging of rock muscicians, as viewed through their lifestyles and music)

"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.