FALL ALBUMS : David Bowie’s Tunefully ‘Tin’ Ear : *** TIN MACHINE “Tin Machine II” <i> Victory</i>

The man who sold the world on his talent for so long may not quite be ready to reclaim the top of the charts, but on his second album with his three-piece rock combo, David Bowie has come up with some of the most listenable music he’s made since the early ‘80s.

Bowie has tempered his band members’ withering aggression by injecting into his songwriting a touch of the mellow moodiness that characterized his “Low”/”Heroes” period. While the results fall short of the genius displayed on those albums, “Tin Machine II” is often tuneful, occasionally provocative and rarely dull.

“You Belong in Rock & Roll,” a tongue-in-cheek, guitar-in-hand put-down of a lover, reverberates hypnotically with washes of what sound like whale noises. And while the dense, lyrically bleak “One Shot” sounds almost embarrassingly discordant on the radio sandwiched between Cathy Dennis and Marky Mark, it takes on a malevolent allure played privately behind closed doors.

Four asterisks: excellent; three stars, good; two stars, fair; one star: poor.