HORMONE HARMONIES

“LONG TIME COMING.” Ready for the World. MCA. “Love You Down,” the first cut on this album, opens with the kind of sincere, delicately stated lyrics few women could resist: “It never really mattered to me / That you were too damned old for me. . . .” Yeah, right, guys. Lead singer Melvin Riley Jr. has a way of singing lines like that in such a sly, tongue-in-cheek manner that it’s tough to tell whether you’re being wooed or whipped into submission.

This Flint, Mich.-based group owes a lot to Prince in the areas of hormone-laden harmonies and lyric slant. Sometimes that gets a tad heavyhanded, as in the title cut and “In My Room,” where the group’s “doin’ it ‘til dawn” philosophy lacks variety and seems shortsighted, to say the least. On the other hand, a dance track like “Mary Goes ‘Round,” about a willing-to-please groupie, does sport a caustic line that even Prince might like to steal: “You’re like a doorknob / Everybody’s had their turn.”

The album closes on “Do You Get Enough,” a dance-rocker that includes a lewd and witty chant. No doubt about it, RFTW is one-dimensional. But occasionally that one dimension manages to measure up.