ALBUM REVIEW : CONCRETE BLONDE “Walking in London”, <i> I.R.S.</i> * * * 1/2

Concrete Blonde’s fourth starts off with the “Rawhide” rhythm of “Ghost of a Texas Ladies’ Man,” Johnette Napolitano’s close encounter with a cowboy incubus. From there, the album gets far less campy, but no less about ghosts.

For many of the deeply personal songs that follow describe separation between lovers in terminology that suggests adrift, disembodied spirits--from “Why Don’t You See Me?,” the enraged memoirs of an invisible woman, to “Someday,” a lullaby of exhausted resignation.

In the most striking post-relationship blues here, “I Wanna Be Your Friend Again,” Napolitano dials up an ex and--in a spoken interlude--we hear both her casual chat and what she’d really like to tell him (“You’re going to be burning in hell with this woman!”). It’s the funny musical equivalent of that famous “Annie Hall” scene where talk and thoughts contrast.

Much of “London” has the same near-telepathic feel. If it doesn’t always rock as ferociously as you might wish a CB album would, it maintains the battering force of a good boo! , thanks to that Napolitano trademark: raw emotion on disc with virtually no fidelity loss in the transliteration. Spooky.

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