POP MUSIC : SPRING ALBUM ROUNDUP

** 1/2 MELISSA ETHERIDGE “Never Enough” Island

On her first two albums, Etheridge used her throaty, turbo-powered pipes to play a woman oft hurt, deprived and betrayed. Love continues to mess her up on her latest (never enough of what--pain?). But she does find new angles on the same old story, even managing an ironic laugh over love unrequited (“Must Be Crazy for Me”) and a coy chuckle over sexual politics (“Meet Me in the Back”).

Most promisingly, Etheridge isn’t content merely to dig further into the heartland-rock furrow of her previous work. The first cut, “Ain’t It Heavy,” is a virtual Bob Seger tribute, but elsewhere she explores new possibilities--notably the “Achtung Baby”-style detours into dance rhythms and hip-hop accents of “2001” and “Must Be Crazy for Me.” The results stretch Etheridge’s range, yet the two songs are still anchored solidly in rock tradition.

“Dance Without Sleeping” gets the luminously textured Peter Gabriel treatment; “Meet Me in the Dark” cops a chunky groove from the Who’s “Magic Bus,” while “The Letting Go” is a soft piano ballad that shows an appealing, sensitive folkie side.

Lyrics are Etheridge’s stumbling block: She chocks her songs with emotional buzzwords instead of the probing details and metaphors you get from a more expert love pathologist like Rosanne Cash. The big finale, “It’s for You,” is pure bathos, a simultaneously self-pitying and self-aggrandizing suffering-diva extravaganza that should have stayed in the can or been turned over to Bette Midler for “The Rose, Part II.” But, characteristically, Etheridge sings the hell out of it.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).

* WAIT, THERE’S MORE

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