O.C. RECORD REVIEWS : Some Good Picks for Guitar Fans : A batch of releases by locals, ranging from blues vet Junior Watson to punk rockers Supernova, reveals an abundance of skill and promise.

Excellent guitar work is the common denominator for the cream of this crop of new local record releases. Original and idiosyncratic aren’t common adjectives for traditional blues players, but Junior Watson wears them comfortably on his first solo album after a long career as a sideman. Jon Melkerson of Eli Riddle is as fine a guitarist as you’ll find in the whole wide college-rock world, while the often-overlooked Frank Agnew gets in some hard-to-ignore solos on Rule 62’s debut single. Also reviewed is the debut album by Down the Line, and a new single from Supernova. Ratings range from * (a dud) to **** (breathtaking). Three stars denote a solid recommendation.

*** 1/2 Eli Riddle “Eli Riddle”

Vital Music “I need some confidence, that’s all I need,” was Jon Melkerson’s lament on a song from the 1989 debut album by his former band, Eggplant.

From the sound of the first release by Eli Riddle, Eggplant’s slightly revamped successor, Melkerson is well on the way to fulfilling his own wish.

“Eli Riddle” is a guitar fan’s delight, full of inventive string work that bursts with vigor and brims with intelligence. The songwriting equals the playing, as the CD’s 10 catchy and memorable tracks carry forward the homespun philosophic dialogue that established Melkerson as a low-keyed, unassuming, but thoughtful Everyman in his Eggplant days.

Melkerson’s acknowledged guitar mentor is Tom Verlaine. Like the former Television leader (whose work Eggplant covered on record, and Eli Riddle often essays on stage), Melkerson has a sure sense of structure and dynamics that allows him to build attractive guitar frameworks for his songs.

That makes possible the extended journey of “Shadows,” an eight-minute opus that moves through shifting moods in segments that by turns recall Television, Pink Floyd and Neil Young. Judiciousness is Melkerson’s norm, but he can blaze freely when it counts. His approach ranges from the big, fat, deliberately dumb arena-chording of the gently satiric “Rock,” to deft, darting parts that crop up virtually everywhere. What matters most is that, at each turn, the sound seems to jump off the strings with the special immediacy and, yes, confidence, that only the best players command.

Drummer Dave Tabone, another of the local alternative-rock scene’s top players, is crisp and propulsive, driving the band without getting in the way of vocal lines or instrumental detail work. He helps Eli Riddle rock without letup. Richard Ivemeyer, the only Riddler who wasn’t in Eggplant, is strong enough to turn his bass into a harmony instrument moving in tandem with Melkerson’s leads. John (JK) Kelly rounds out the band on rhythm guitar, and Melkerson’s fiancee, Chris Fairbanks, provides some helpful harmony support on several songs. (Vocal harmonies were an Eggplant strength that was lost when singer-songwriter Jeff Beals split with the other members of that excellent band, who went on to form Eli Riddle.)

Melkerson’s singing has gained substantially in confidence since his Eggplant days. His voice has a dry, flat, Midwestern quality that fits the essential reticence of the characters in his songs. Melkerson is perpetually surveying life warily before deciding whether to move forward.

The songs are emotionally involving because the narrators do move forward, despite their awareness of pitfalls from without and their knowledge of the doubts and inadequacies they harbor within. The increased stature and freedom Melkerson musters in his vocals enables him to reveal that forward motion for what it really is: a small act of heroism.

With no weak tracks and a rare internal cohesion, “Eli Riddle” stands as a strong early contender for Orange County album of the year.

(Available from Vital Music, P.O. Box 908, Westminster, Calif. 92684-0908.)

* Eli Riddle plays Thursday at Electric Circus in Anaheim. (714) 827-1210.

*** Junior Watson “Long Overdue”

Black Top After many years as a member of Canned Heat and the Mighty Flyers, this Stanton-based blues veteran certainly has earned his album title.

Watson makes up for lost time, turning his first solo album into a 63-minute stroll through the mansion of the blues. He leaves his own tag on every wall as surely as if he’d been carrying a spray can instead of a guitar.

The offerings include Chicago blues shuffles and slow songs, a whole lot of jumping, jazzy stuff, and detours to New Orleans for some funky R&B; and to Memphis for a hopped-up, swinging rockabilly-influenced number.

Besides keeping the styles varied, Watson is smart enough to break up the long, 17-song trek by bringing in a couple of capable guest singers in Lynwood Slim and Brenda Burns. A platoon of adept backing players add their own distinctive touches. This is a good album for blues piano, organ and saxophone, as well as blues guitar.

Watson’s guitar approach is truly distinctive. Where most players want their ax chops to ring through the surrounding forest of sound as plangently as possible, Watson loves to choke back the guitar’s voice in a staccato style that’s clipped and economical. There’s a delicious contradiction here as Watson plays abundantly while making sparseness a virtue.

This sense of economy allows the music to breathe and adds to the sense of spaciousness that pervades the album. Close your eyes and listen, and much of the time you’ll feel as if you’re in a blues joint where it’s near closing time, most of the people have left, and the band is pulling out the tunes it likes to play for its own pleasure.

Another Watson weapon seldom heard in trad-blues circles is dissonance. He’ll play notes that don’t seem to belong and set out on standard paths in a solo, only to take an apparently wrong turn into harmonic territory that’s way off the chart.

There is something of the off-kilter sense that rocker Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) brings to his patented, discordant style. But where Ribot accentuates the weird, Watson wobbles and skitters in search of fun, exploring the blues-guitar idiom for its most playful possibilities. The result is a pervasive mood of happy disequilibrium.

Watson is also an effective singer whose burry but flexible voice has the conversational tone well-adapted to blues storytelling. On “Lump in My Throat,” a slow, tearful lament, his voice introduces a winking sense of exaggeration that puts the woeful lyric in a new, comical light (the technique calls to mind the amiable blues veteran, Charles Brown).

When you find yourself chuckling through a song about the contemplation of suicide, somebody is putting a strange, surprising slant on things. But with this wizardly Watson, traditional blues becomes anything but elementary.

*** Rule 62 “Friends!?” Lethal Most moonlighter bands are clearly just an informal or experimental outlet for musicians whose primary energies are otherwise engaged. Brian Coakley, who plays guitar and writes much of the material for the popular, hard-hitting Cadillac Tramps, could be able to make a good deal more than that of his new side project.

For one thing, he has surrounded himself with impressive talent: Drummer Christopher Webb (also of One Hit Wonder) and lead guitarist Frank Agnew, the former Adolescent, are experienced, first-class help (the fourth member is bassist Libby Agnew, Frank’s wife). For another, Coakley is a more-than-credible singer with a throaty, rangy voice and the ability to tap a deep well of passion.

With “Friends!?,” the A side of this three-song vinyl single, Coakley presents grief on a grand scale. “Broken Down,” one of two B-side tracks, melds punk-rock revving with Beatlesque melodic touches. “Anyway” was conceived as a Tramps song and features their signature heavy, bouncing beat. But its Angst quotient is higher than the Tramps’ humorous, swaggering framework typically allows.

Because Agnew either has failed to find or avoided establishing a steady, stable band to showcase his talents, he remains one of the most underrated players on the Orange County rock scene. Here, his clean, slicing leads take on a more bluesy cast than we’ve heard in his past work with the Adolescents.

Rule 62 observes the first rule of ‘90s rock, which is to steal well from the past. “Friends!?” nicks the riff of Boston’s “Peace of Mind,” while the guitar part on “Broken Down” sounds in spots like a speeded-up run through the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.”

Strong local scenes are often incestuous, with lots of in-breeding and partner-swapping among musicians from related bands. Rule 62 is a good example of how, at least in music, in-breeding can be healthy for the species.

(Available from Lethal Records, P.O. Box 14868, Long Beach, Calif., 90803-1414.)

** 1/2 Down the Line “Down the Line”

Sell Records A lot of first albums by young bands could use some editing, whether the band is a major-label success like Counting Crows or a rank unknown like Down the Line. But if parts of Down the Line’s CD are unfocused and extraneous, the essence is promising.

Jerry Andrews is a freely emotional singer with a scratchy but melodious voice. He and his songwriting partner, Jim Akin, are interested in something few young bands nowadays even conceive of: lyrics that go beyond telegraphic fragments of feeling or sense perception, seeking instead to paint a setting or tell a story.

Down the Line doesn’t always do that--there are times when you can’t figure out what the heck they’re talking about. But the strongest tracks here deliver.

Among them are “H&H;,” with its account of intentional downward mobility, “56,” a broadside apparently directed at violent bigots, and “Andale,” in which a nicely etched setting becomes the backdrop for a reverie of varied emotional shadings.

Andrews sometimes sounds like two other good, stringy-voiced rock singers who specialize in frayed emotion: John Easdale of Dramarama and Big Star-period Alex Chilton. When the music and lyrics grow sonorous and pretentious, as happens occasionally, Geddy Lee of Rush is the more apt comparison.

Akin gets carried away with his brooding, hollow-toned, son-of-Jaco Pastorius bass-playing. In a rock context, carefully regulated bass lines are best unless you’ve got John Entwistle in your band. A lot of Akin’s moody noodling is lard that needs trimming.

(Available from Down the Line, 654 E. Palm Ave., Orange, Calif., 92666.)

* Down the Line plays Thursday at Electric Circus in Anaheim. (714) 827-1210.

** 1/2 Supernova “Calling Hong Kong”

Goldenrod This Costa Mesa trio wears spacesuits onstage and pretends it hails from another galaxy, but there is little about its approach that Southern California punk fans will find alien.

Supernova’s vinyl single offers catchy, gimmicky garage-punk played for silly fun. The main idea here is to make a mockery of the very notion of musical careerism (“Don’t you wish we could play these guitars?” they inquire at one point).

But such long-running kindred bands as the Dickies and the Vandals have made semi-careers by playing just this sort of stuff, and Supernova is fast garnering a following.

(Available from Goldenrod Records, 4186-A Sorrento Valley Blvd., San Diego, Calif., 92121.)

* Supernova plays tonight at Our House in Costa Mesa. (714) 650-8960.