Album Review: ‘9’ : PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. “9.” Virgin. **

Relentlessly witty, acerbic and outspoken, Johnny Lydon is a great personality. He should have his own counterculture talk show--then he wouldn’t feel compelled to make records as mundane as “9.” Were it any other musician, “9” might coast by on its big, bombastic, made-for-KROQ propulsion, its expert musicianship, its incorporation of Arabic tonalities and Brit-funk rhythms into a wall of murk.

But we’re dealing with the formative figurehead of punk-rock (Sex Pistols) and what came after (PiL’s original spacey, free-form meanderings). Lydon’s sneering wail is intact (if buried in the mix), but considering that his past work included searing, scabrous views of abortion (the Pistols’ “Bodies”) and hallucinogenic jabs against capitalism (PiL’s “Careering”), things like “9’s” banal warnings about a “Brave New World” seem pretty vacant. Only a facsimile of his former rotten self, Lydon proclaims at one point, “I am a warrior! I take no prisoners!” Adam Ant couldn’t have expressed it better.