Past is the present in three new CDs

Arizona Summer Wildcat Ben Harper

No amount of disc jockey reshuffling can make it better if the music is lacking.

Kathy Rivers cannot save us from the Bloodhound Gang.

But there are albums out there worth having and some of them have been sent to the Arizona Summer Wildcat .

Pay attention.

Ben Harper's latest album, The Will To Live (Virgin), is the stuff of life. Harper sounds like everybody and he sounds like him. Echoes of Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Stevens, Chris Whitley, to name a few, bounce around the room while the disc is spi nning. But always there is something distinct, something personal even in the most typical song writing truisms. On "Glory & Consequence" Harper flashes back and forth between jumping acoustic guitar and power chords and is able to make lines like "I am l ess afraid of dying than I am of growing old," sound new and interesting all over again. Like other singers before him, but few recently, Harper reaches overtly for the religious. Lyrics like those in the closer "I Shall Not Walk Alone." "When my legs no longer carry/and the warm wind chills my bones/I reach for Mother Mary/ and I shall not walk alone," or those on the Marley-esque track "Jah Work." Harper mixes his melancholy with a little hope, with a little peace, with a little understanding.

Next up on your hit parade . . . remember when.

Remember when O.M.D. and New Order songs were played at your high school? I certainly don't, but I do remember hearing Bizarre Love Triangle before Frente! (I think). Anyhow, here's a band with legit '80s credits doing legit '80s music that still sounds g ood. Monaco, featuring New Order bassist Peter Hook, ventures forth to fill the hole in the lives of sensitive boys left out by electropop's demise. The album, Music for Pleasure (Polydor), opens with its first single, "What do you want from me?" soaring with violin-like keyboard solos like you haven't heard since Pretty in Pink. Perfect pop. At times, the band veers away from the keyboards in favor of a grittier, but no less poppy Oasis-like songs such as "Buzz Gum" or slicker disco dancing numbers like "Junk." It's every sound that's come out of Britain since 1982 wrapped up into a flat, little, round package.

Primus is back with an offering called Brown Album (Interscope). It's got all the whippet sucking energy of such classics as "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver." The same spastic sounds and storytelling permeate this album. For example, "Golden Boy" tells the t wisted Big Bad John-like tale of a kid who shoots somebody for stealing a 40 oz. beer. Killer line, when the kid is asked if he feels guilty, he says "Hell no, ya know a thief's a thief/ And I'd shoot that fucker again." For sheer amusement value, you can 't beat the mock Wall, faux-ominous opener "The Return Of Sathington Willoughby." "The problem with youth today is, because of their inexperience with the world./They cannot attempt to grasp the ideal set forth by myself and those who preceded me," the so ng goes. You know, there might be something really true here in lead bassist and singer Les Claypool's lyrics. All he's been playing are variations on "Hot Rod Lincoln." Yet, all these crazy kids feel this need to beat the living shit out of each other wh en he plays.

That is all.