**** Great Balls of Fire *** Good Vibrations ** Maybe Baby * Running on Empty : Heart in Throat

*** CHERYL WHEELER. “Half a Book.” Cypress. The Rhode Island singer-songwriter has been compared favorably to Randy Newman, Joan Armatrading, Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne--and even Linda Ellerbee. Her second album largely reinforces the good words, but with a warm, unassuming charm rather than with a knock-you-dead brilliance. As a writer, she has a great eye--and ear--for detail, from the uncomplicated childhood pleasures of the title tune to the forlorn observations of a failed love in “Piper.” As a vocalist, she’s definitely a graduate of the Linda Ronstadt-Jennifer Warnes heart-in-her-throat school. Wheeler usually uses a softer touch than those two, but she can also turn feisty, as in “I Don’t Have the Time.” And while she deftly bends, twists and shapes phrases like any good jazz singer, she never sounds as if she’s doing so just to show off. Throw in her gift for enchanting melodies and Wheeler shapes up as a late-’80s triple threat.