*** Kevin Coyne

SUGAR CANDY TAXI

(Ruf)

British singer/songwriter Kevin Coyne is a strange one. As influenced by the rough-and-tumble sounds of Mississippi blues as by his job as a counselor to London drug addicts, he arrived in the '70s with a cawing birdcall voice and a collection of songs about madness, guilt, and despair. His signature tune was the chilling asylum classic "House on the Hill," cut when the then unknown guitarist Andy Summers was in his employ.

Thirty-six albums into his career, Coyne has seen his own ghosts -- dealing with alcoholism and his slide from cult hero to outright obscurity over the decades -- and emerged gray-haired but bright-eyed. Sugar Candy Taxi is a gas, straddling folk, rock, pop, free jazz, and nursery rhymes. Even when he's complaining in "Porcupine People" about the pricks that make life a bitch, there's something human, kindly, and content in his cackle. Except, perhaps, in "Almost Dying," which his Ozzy-ish vocal and matching guitar riff turn into a dwarf Black Sabbath rant. Full of vigor and playful imagination, this is a comeback from the land of Nevermore.

-- Ted Drozdowski