Case’s ‘Six-Pack’ Tastes Light : **, PETER CASE, “Six Pack of Love”, <i> Geffen</i>

This is purported to be Case’s return from neo-troubadour styles to the rock of his old band the Plimsouls. Right era, wrong band. More often, “Six Pack” sounds like early Elvis Costello, and it’s that year’s model all the way, with co-producer Mitchell Froom leaning heavily on the Farfisa-organ-like sound. Even when Case does go for more of a Plimsouls sound, it comes off too much as a rerun, though Case’s clenched, Lennonesque voice is as sharp as ever.

What’s missing is what Case honed in his post-Plimsouls years: his abilities as a storyteller with a sharp sense of detail fleshing out an ongoing moral and spiritual quest. Instead, most of these upbeat numbers deal only with love found and lost, without the depth we’ve come to expect. Only the haunting “When You Don’t Come” and the ramblin’ man-ifesto “Never Comin’ Home” (“When people ask me why I have to roam/I’ll say that 90% of accidents happen in the home”) touch Case’s past work.

New albums are rated on a scale of one asterisk (poor) to four (excellent).