GRAHAM PARKER AND THE RUMOUR —Stick To Me (Mercury)::Graham Parker's enshrined status as rock critics' teacher's pet of 1976 is wearing a bit thin now that punk-plunk is rapidly replacing those tarnished old (recent?) Springsteen ikons, but this is still a solid, rewarding album, whatever fashion's going down. Parker's exposition of modern urban romanticism, without the automatic validation of an enclosed lyric sheet, is some kind of achievement in itself, these post-literate days. Besides, everybody tells me that this sounds almost interchangeable with Elvis Costello (and so it does!), so Graham's ride on the New Wave hasn't wiped out yet.

R.R.

PAUL NICHOLAS (RSO)::The success of Leo Sayer's simper-rock really started something,' didn't it? Now we've got Paul Nicholas, another adenoidal Anglo, whose hit 45, "Heaven On The 7th Floor", aspires to the lofty profundity of the Sylvers. Hey, you could've written this bio yourself, kidsy hasn't every other gratuitous solo-singer debut of the past season been by an alumnus of "the London productions of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar"? How many thousand versions of those clunkers did the bloody Limeys put on, anyhow?

R.R.