* * * * <i> Great Balls of Fire</i> * * * <i> Good Vibrations</i> * * <i> Maybe Baby</i> * <i> Running on Empty : </i> : BAEZ IN BALANCE

* * * “RECENTLY.” Joan Baez. Gold Castle. To answer the question begged by the title of her first studio album in eight years, Baez has recently been up to the same thing she’s been doing for more than a quarter century: applying her exquisite voice to songs of social struggle and romantic longing. But where her post-’60s albums too often suffered from heavy-handed preaching and sugary sentimentality, this solidly balanced album is buoyed by consistently excellent material, from the unpretentious anti-war plea of Mark Knopfler’s “Brothers in Arms” to the religious-social benediction of U2’s “MLK.” Some of the platitudes in her own nostalgic “James & the Gang” fall embarrassingly flat, and her rendition of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” misses the power and urgency of the original, but those slips are the exception, not the rule. “Recently” is an invigorating and rewarding return to form.