POP MUSIC REVIEW : Houston Finds Voice by Getting Personal : After a Shaky Start, Whitney Shows Substance with Late-’60s Gospel, R

Sheeee . . . ee-ee . . . ee-ee will always love us. That, we know.

But is Whitney Houston evergreen?

Premiering with great fanfare on television Sunday was the Barbra Streisand cable special, filmed principally at the former funny lady’s final show at the Pond of Anaheim a month ago. Appearing in person at the same arena, meanwhile, was arguably the most naturally gifted pop vocalist of a subsequent generation, diva-in-waiting Whitney.

And inescapably, given the timing and venue, at least, Houston was facing some substantial footsteps to follow. For anyone truly interested in charting a comparison between these two leading ladies of successive eras, the odds pointed toward anticlimax.

Houston’s show (rescheduled from its original July date because of the singer’s throat ailment) certainly started badly, if slickly, with all the dispiriting earmarks of a prematurely rote, Vegas-style revue. Yet she pulled it out of the bag in a big way, eventually loosening up and letting more of a playful, spontaneous personality shine through, while retreating from the hits to less obligatory material that clearly held far more personal meaning for her.

And like--yes--Barbra, Whitney now spends a fair amount of stage time ruminating on her personal life as well as the public perception of it. (Severe ego-phobes need not apply in either case, obviously.) Whereas Streisand’s presentation of self is carefully scripted, though, Houston’s is messy; she seems alternately guarded or extemporaneous in ways that are frustrating and fascinating. At least, unlike some of her melismatic rivals on the charts, there seems to be a there there.

The there is publicly tough, through and through; there is no waxing vulnerable. When Houston defends herself and her husband, Bobby Brown, against tabloid accounts of their supposedly rocky relationship (“I am a woman in love, and I have a man in love with me. You know how I know? ‘Cause I give him every reason to stay home”), she’s cocky on behalf of family. When she moves into gospel territory, she’s cocky for the Lord.

You might wish for just a small crack in all this emotional armor, without necessarily asking her to succumb to the tragedian instincts of divas past. (Houston did get teary once--not on her own behalf but while noting that the children of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson were in the audience and had sent her flowers. When she asked for a spotlight to be put on the presumably unsuspecting Simpson kids, it was a classically weird, mortifying moment.)

But if anyone has the material goods to convincingly carry off stoutheartedness, it’s Houston. By her own admission, she wasn’t in top voice Sunday, and she had to ask for the Pond’s air conditioning to be shut off at mid-set to protect herself from the draft. That said, she approached sheer vocal perfection at virtually every turn. If ever before she succumbed to the temptation to over-sing, at this seasoned date she consistently finds just the right impressive peaks and exquisite valleys without ever unduly extending a phrase past what it’s worth.

In the second half of the show, she got to apply that astonishing instrument to some material worthy of it. By way of paying homage to her mother, Cissy Houston’s, vocal quartet, the Sweet Inspirations, Houston launched into a long medley of late-’60s secular and gospel oldies, starting with the Aretha Franklin smash “A Natural Woman,” whose original vocal arrangements were done by the senior Houston.

Inevitable conclusion: Whitney was born 20 years too late.

Two decades too late, that is, to be consistently provided with the kind of material (and overall career guidance, perhaps) that would do justice to her full talent. Watching her progress emotionally through a gospel standard or great ‘60s R&B; ballad made it all the more difficult to see Houston go back and end the show as she began it--with peppy but decidedly unmoving up-tempo numbers, augmented by Bobby Brown’s female dancers in workout gear, or by doing balladry more suited to contemporary Broadway than the stuff of classic soul.

There were several mostly vain attempts to get the crowd on its feet during the perfunctory likes of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” when what we really wanted was more of Houston off her feet--on a stool, recalling ‘Retha and Mom, sultrily pulling down the scrim that separates potential greatness from greatness. It’s within her grasp, but even Streisand would have a hard time meeting her potential if she were 31 and forced to conform to the expectations of 1994.