O.C. POP BEAT / MIKE BOEHM : Artists Make a Serious Connection : Vinnie James and Richard Stekol are opposite in many ways, but their latest albums reveal they both take songwriting seriously.

Besides the fact that they live in Orange County and play folk-based rock, Vinnie James and Richard Stekol would seem to have little in common.

Stekol is a graying veteran who has seen his share of disappointments in a 20-year career dating back to his days with that band of local ‘70s heroes, Honk. His debut solo album, “Richard Stekol,” is a quiet, introspective work released by a small, untested Orange County record company that will have to hustle and scratch to win it an airing.

James, a generation younger, arrives with an aggressive, confrontational album that tackles broad social issues. Due out Tuesday, James’ “All American Boy” will benefit from a major label’s promotional push.

If their backgrounds and immediate commercial prospects differ, Stekol and James at least have this in common: Each is a serious-minded songwriter whose gifts are well represented on the albums reviewed below. The rating system ranges from * (poor) to ***** (a classic). Three stars denotes a solid recommendation.

*** 1/2

VINNIE JAMES

“All American Boy”

Cypress/RCA

James doesn’t shy from making Big Statements about social issues. That’s a risky proposition, because the inclination to address large issues can turn music as dry as last week’s op-ed page, or as shrill and shallow as any installment of the McLaughlin Group.

But as he inveighs against such evils as racism, the drug scourge and educational collapse, James’ keen pop instincts never desert him. Each of the 11 songs on “All American Boy” works on a musical basis alone.

James’ memorable melodies, unpredictable vocal phrasings and resourceful song arrangements prevent redundancy. And with a stellar backing cast that includes Al Kooper on keyboards and Kenny Aronoff drumming with even more than his usual brilliance, James is effective in all sorts of musical settings.

“War Song” is a solo acoustic ballad in which James softly laments the persistence of bloodshed; tracks such as “Freedom Cried” and the powerful “Hey Geronimo” are headlong, anti-racist acoustic rockers in which his husky, R&B-based; voice bristles with vigor, alarm and a prophet’s conviction. James’ knack for playing with sounds and inflections lets him avoid the sound-alike trap common to debut artists. Well, at least it does most of the time. Several songs closely echo Graham Parker’s sound, but they are songs worthy of that estimable British rocker.

James’ non-political songs offer a change of pace, although they make for a less cohesive album. “Walking on Stone” is a simple, wistfully pretty song of romantic regrets. “Little Angel” and “Landslide” are more philosophical, tracing a theme Bob Dylan covered in “Like a Rolling Stone”--how a secure, sheltered existence is no substitute for immersion in real experience, with all its rawness, loneliness and pain.

Elsewhere, James sets about painting his social critiques on a big canvas, using imaginative touches to avoid falling into soapbox speechifying.

On “Freedom Cried,” he personifies racism as a historical spirit that narrates the song, much as Dickens rendered an abstract concept concrete with his ghosts of Christmas. James, who is black, lends poignancy to this voice of white America, depicting it grappling with the ongoing nightmare of its racial obsessions, and realizing, at last, that it must reform itself.

The song exemplifies the album’s overall thrust, which is to depict social ills unflinchingly while clinging to the idealistic notion that recognizing and confronting them is a first step toward change. James’ vision stands against that of most politicized hard-core rappers, whose vivid, journalistic accounts of a society out of whack seem almost to revel in outrage and despair.

But James also could benefit from the specificity of rap--or, more to the point, from a concrete, story-oriented songwriting approach to serve as a counterpoint to his metaphors and abstractions. Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” are closely observed character studies, miniatures that illuminate broader social issues.

In addressing the big issues on “All American Boy,” James neglects to show how they impact ordinary people. The forceful anti-drug single, “Black Money,” starts out on a more specific tack, but James fails to develop the story line as he quickly jumps to some powerful, but abstract verses depicting a nation on the nod.

Overall, though, James’ long-delayed arrival (the album has been in the can for more than a year) is a bracing call for alertness and awareness that has the potential to hit home with a broad audience. It’s not just the messages that distinguish “All American Boy,” but the intensity and confidence of the performances, and the inviting pop appeal of the songs.

****

“Richard Stekol”

BSQ

If the fledgling BSQ label can get this album on the radio (its unflattering cover photo won’t help), a lot of people are going to stop in their tracks and say, “Isn’t that Jackson Browne? And, wow, this stuff is better than anything he’s done in ages!”

There are obvious parallels between Stekol’s record and the classic Browne style of “Late for the Sky” and “For Everyman.” It’s there in the voice--a grainy low range, a plaintive reediness higher up. Browne’s greater heft and body certainly make him the better vocalist, but Stekol, despite some thinness, is nevertheless a tuneful and emotive singer.

Similarities extend to Stekol’s song arrangements, which feature light, shimmering piano and gorgeous dobro and lap steel guitar by Greg Leisz, who does for Stekol what multi-instrumentalist David Lindley used to do for Jackson Browne. (Leisz plays in Stekol’s band, the Seclusions, when not serving as a sideman for k.d. lang.)

Above all, the Browne connection is there in Stekol’s wistful melodies, and in sober, superbly crafted lyrics that achieve poetic eloquence and philosophic beauty without straining for it.

Most of “Richard Stekol” is a moving meditation on what it means to find that love does not conquer all, that even a relationship founded on real love can break. It’s a uniquely adult form of heartbreak that Stekol is singing about, and he tells his story with insight and delicacy.

Where such great albums as “Pet Sounds” and “Astral Weeks” deal with the crushing disillusionment of young love gone sour, Stekol depicts a different sort of sadness in which there is no open rancor or betrayal involved, only the recognition that sometimes, because of nobody’s great fault, these things just don’t work out.

Stekol traces his theme through songs of regret and self-doubt, of unfulfilled longing, and songs in which the memory of lost love offers a kind of sustenance, a realization that having loved can confer a lasting grace and strength, even after lovers have parted.

Stekol has a special knack for describing the forlorn geography of loneliness and emotional pain. The sad soliloquists who populate his songs move through chilly city landscapes full of dividing walls that signal the emotional barriers they have run up against.

But set against that are moments with a warming glow--like the spark of failing twilight captured in a crystal bottle that Stekol describes with a jeweler’s eye for detail in “Coloured Water.”

Sometimes Stekol’s lines grow lengthy, and a little knotty and obscure. But then he hits you with admirably economical and transparent songwriting in such numbers as the radiant “The Light That Shines in You” and “I’ll Wish For You,” a yearning concluding ballad that builds a graceful emotional sculpture out of three- and four-syllable lines. It sounds more like Todd Rundgren than Jackson Browne--and Rundgren fans who hear it will think Todd has had a sudden artistic resurgence, too.

Good as all these ruminations about love may be, they are almost eclipsed by the album’s masterpiece, “America Walking By.”

During four shattering minutes, Stekol takes us inside the home of a mother and father who have lost a son in battle, showing them as they try to compose themselves in the hours before his funeral. Without straining for effect, without trying to discover some broader meaning or affirmation in this soldier’s death, Stekol--an ex-Marine who saw combat in Vietnam--immerses a listener in pure loss and conveys the fearsome dignity of those who have to absorb the blow and go on.

Listening to “America Walking By” is like watching the final scene of “The Deer Hunter,” like seeing the photograph of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s coffin. Absolutely devastating, it unites all who hear it in a community of sorrow.

“Richard Stekol” is available from BSQ Entertainment Group, P.O. Box 6566, Laguna Niguel, Calif., 92677-6566. Stekol and the Seclusions will open for Honk as it plays two of its periodic reunion shows Saturday night at the Coach House.