Heart Of Darkness

By Guy Garcia

PERFORMER: JOHN MELLENCAMP

ALBUM: HUMAN WHEELS

LABEL: MERCURY

THE BOTTOM LINE: By lacing his small town twang with urban soul, Mellencamp brews an all-American sound.

LIKE A TROUBADOUR ADRIFT ON the blue highways of America, John Mellencamp has hitched his muse to the hopes and broken dreams of the heartland. Even before the mid-'80s, when he renounced the pop artifice of his John Cougar past and took back his given name, he had found his calling as a spinner of hook-laden odes to the ordinary man. Early hits that hinted at the darker dimensions of suburbia, like Jack and Diane and Pink Houses, sold millions and made Mellencamp an MTV star. On later albums, like Scarecrow (1985) and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987), he used electric violin and accordion to evoke the bucolic grit of rural America. At the same time, his longstanding commitment to Farm Aid, which he co-founded with Willie Nelson in 1985, gave his prairie- roots message an activist urgency.

On Human Wheels, his 12th album, Mellencamp's social conscience remains as keen as ever, but his small-town twang has evolved into a lusher, worldlier sound. The album, like the diary of a country boy who went to the big city and returned tougher and wiser, is tempered by the neon images and jukebox sounds of urban America, melding straight-ahead electric-guitar licks with the staccato rhythms of the modern melting pot.

The vitality of the brew is evident from the first track, When Jesus Left Birmingham, a tent-raising sermon about human nature that sounds unlike anything Mellencamp has done before. His voice grainy and low over a smacking drumbeat and soulful female backup vocals, Mellencamp conjures a godforsaken land of dashed aspirations and sordid pleasures, where "all the people went completely nuts./ They all busted out on a wild night/ Riding high on a golden calf." The song also echoes America's disenchantment with politicians and the economy. "To hell with all the politicians and the lies," Mellencamp sings. "Recovery, recovery, I don't know about any recovery."

Junior uses anxious violin chords to underline the confessions of an alienated couch potato who sees "the world through the TV Guide" and muses, "I know I'm missin' something/ But I don't know what it is." Case 795 (The Family) is an unflinching view of a domestic squabble that ends with the wife "bleeding on the floor in the kitchen/ With cake on her fingers."

The mood brightens on French Shoes, a snickering critique of foreign footwear, and on cuts like Beige to Beige and What If I Came Knocking, both of which reaffirm Mellencamp's knack for exuberantly melodic rock 'n' roll. The record ends, appropriately, with To the River, on which Mellencamp dives "down to the undertow" and declares, "Well, the deeper I drown/ Lord, the higher I'll go." The lyric, with its suggestion of cleansing renewal, demonstrates the essential optimism at the core of Mellencamp's dire vision and his faith in the healing power of music. By venturing into the urban wilderness, Mellencamp has discovered the core of the American soul.