Souls On Ice

By JAY COCKS

PERFORMER: JANET JACKSON

ALBUM: JANET.

LABEL: VIRGIN

PERFORMER: TERENCE TRENT D'ARBY

ALBUM: SYMPHONY OR DAMN

LABEL: COLUMBIA

THE BOTTOM LINE: Two careers in the balance -- one flourishing, the other floundering -- look to cut loose.

It was a time of great music, classic music -- definitive American popular music -- but one notable writer didn't think so. Ring Lardner, the humorist of humble wonders and the ironist of old-time virtues, was driven to rages of wit over the suggestive excesses of Tin Pan Alley and the Broadway stage. Cole Porter's gymnastics in verse drove Lardner to postulate any number of revisions that reflected his disgust without diminishing his vitriol ("Night and day, under the bark of me/ There's an Oh, such a mob of microbes making a park of me"). Temperance of any kind was not a Lardner trademark.

In this, at any rate, he has something in common with the two singer-writers represented here. Since humor on these two albums is in short supply, it is interesting to speculate on what Lardner might have made of Terence Trent D'Arby's "T.I.T.S."/"F&J," an exceedingly unlikely -- beautifully unlikely -- evocation of the Frankie and Johnny legend. Or what he would have done with Janet Jackson's Throb ("I can feel your body/ pressed against my body/ when you start to poundin'/ love to feel you throbbin'/ throb/ throb/ throb"). Or what it might have done to him. Cole Porter might even have got a formal apology.

The album janet. comes on strong from its first full song, That's the Way Love Goes, a silken seduction ballad that purrs and pounces. When the singer wants to talk back at a lover who's been "runnin' 'round with those nasty hoes," she has to cut her way through a lush sonic rain forest. As if she were afraid of getting lost in the jungle depths, Jackson enlisted the aid of opera soprano Kathleen Battle, whose soaring obbligato she chases through the song like a kid following a bread-crumb trail out of a fairy-tale forest.

For all its sass, there is something a little too careful about this album: the rhythms are too studied and studiobound, the sexiness slightly forced. It's as if Jackson, aware that this was her premier effort under a new, $40 million record deal, felt weighed down by the burden of proving herself. When, however, she kicks loose on What'll I Do, a nifty, '60s-style soul stirrer, it's clear that Jackson's got nothing to prove to anyone, including herself. She does her best by just letting the pressure out and having what this record often promises but only sporadically delivers: a good sexy time.

D'Arby, no stranger to great expectations, carries the burden more lightly on his glorious Symphony or Damn, perhaps because he had already fallen such a far distance. His 1987 Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby demonstrated a surging talent. You could hear Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke in his voice, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix in his songs. D'Arby quickly got sidetracked from his talent and ensnared in hype, and his second album, full of the kind of brashness that comes from uncertainty, stiffed badly. Symphony or Damn was his last big chance.

This time he simplified, honing his songs to a fine hard edge, giving play to a restless romanticism that he keeps firmly tethered to the true ways of the heart. Let Her Down Easy, for example, examines both the passions of love and their consequences. The music is a rich tapestry of classic soul influences, fresh rock and forward-looking studio sound. Its sexuality is truly sensual, and the entire record is filled with something not even the best recording studio can capture: the sound of new possibility.