Boardwalk Romance

* * * WILLIE DeVILLE. “Miracle.” A&M.; It’s appropriate that Mark Knopfler, who produced and played on this album, chose DeVille’s “Storybook Love” as the theme for the movie “The Princess Bride,” because the adenoidal New Yorker is definitely a believer in happily ever after. And in “Heart and Soul,” he has come up with a song that ranks alongside some of the great boardwalk romances and street corner symphonies. It’s an optimistic twin of Bruce Springsteen’s troubled “Tunnel of Love,” with which it shares musical inspirations. Nearly as good are the title song, “Angel Eyes” and a version of Van Morrison’s 1967 “Could You Would You.” The only thing spoiling the mood are two clumsy attempts at topicality: “(Due to) Gun Control” (post-Goetz reaction) and “Southern Politician” (sounds like a Dire Straits throwaway). Unfortunately, those are also the album’s longest cuts.