WITH DEBUT ALBUM, WALLFLOWERS ARE READY TO BLOOM

11.06.92 By Parry Gettelman, Sentinel Popular Music Critic, in the Orlando Sentinel, Calendar Section, p. 32.

Los Angeles-based band the Wallflowers just released its first album, a surprisingly mature blend of folk-rock and soul. And the quintet is just getting its feet wet nationally, opening for bands such as the Spin Doctors, Cracker and, currently, 10,000 Maniacs.

But although the Wallflowers will play only a brief set at Orlando's Carr Performing Arts Center Monday, the group certainly has enough material to play a full show. Bass player Barrie Maguire said Jakob Dylan, the group's singer-songwriter-guitarist, is definitely the prolific type.

''I'll write four songs a year, and he'll write 6,000,'' Maguire said from Virgin Records' L.A. offices. ''It's really bad, too, 'cause he'll write a song and we'll go, 'Oh cool, this is great,' and we work on it, and then he's going, 'Whoa, check this one out!' I think we had six No. 1 hits that never got past rehearsal because we're constantly in the middle of a tune. Some of my friends' bands play the same five songs for, like, three years, and they're really getting them down. We never have a chance to get our songs down.

''But the best performance of any song is the second time we play it. It's weird - every time we do a show, the most comments we get are for a new song. And we say, 'Yeah, it's a new one; we're working it out.' And by the time we work it out, we have another one everyone likes better. We need four more albums, like now, just to get stuff documented so we can go on.''

Four more albums from the Wallflowers is certainly an appealing prospect. Although The Wallflowers could possibly use one or two more up-tempo tracks to improve the pacing, it's a terrific debut. Dylan and lead guitarist Tobi Miller create a beautiful, chimey guitar sound that contrasts stunningly with Dylan's rough but agile voice (kind of like Keith Richards' if he had smoked five fewer packs of cigarettes a day). Rami Jaffee's piano and Hammond B-3 recall the soulfulness of The Band. Maguire's melodic but understated bass lines and Peter Yanowitz's easy, solid drumming give the songs an effortless swing rare in rock 'n' roll.

And all 12 songs are memorable tunes with simple, evocative lyrics. Maguire figures Dylan writes so many songs, he's not tempted to over-write.

''He knows he'll have so many opportunities to express what he's saying, he's not going to force any prophetic thoughts,'' Maguire said. ''I think that's true of all our playing, too. . . .''

Maguire was born in Philadelphia, went to college in Kansas City and joked that, at 27, he's ''the grandpa'' of the young group.

''I remember the '70s, and I had hippie parents, so my '70s were really just discovering my parents' '60s,'' he said. He's a big fan of the Grateful Dead (''Phil Lesh is pretty close to God'') and the Beatles.

''I don't talk about the Beatles anymore, though - it's too hard to think about it because they're so close to perfection. I can get depressed if I think about them.''

Maguire moved out to Los Angeles looking to join a band and met Miller at a party. The two ended up playing in a succession of bands, sometimes together, sometimes with Dylan, Miller's old neighborhood buddy. Finally, the three began a yearlong search for a drummer and wound up with Yanowitz. Since Yanowitz grew up in Utah, Maguire joked, his early musical influence was Donny Osmond.

''Jakob's dad (the famous Bob) had influence on him and me and everyone else in the world. I think we all looked back for music and then kind of picked out the cream of what was available in the now - the punk movement and the Replacements and stuff like that and the continuing music, the Stones and the Dead.''

The four called themselves the Apples and got themselves a manager. The group was a bit more ''sonic'' then, Maguire said, a bit noisier.

''We just weren't as good, I guess. Some people liked it better, but they're stoned.''

The quartet decided it needed an organ player and found Jaffee. He was in a number of different bands at the time, but after one rehearsal with the future Wallflowers, he quit all his other gigs.

''That was the first blooming,'' Maguire said. ''The Hammond really opens your mind up to textures.''