The 57-year-old singer's first rock album in a half-dozen years starts out like a house on fire, with the screaming blues ''Love Is a Battlefield'' and the tongue-in-cheek come-on ''Dr. Love.'' But too many of the remaining 10 cuts on Leon Russell's Face in the Crowd are uninspired or derivative (in ''Betty Ann,'' Russell even rips himself off — it's a near clone of his classic ''Delta Lady''). What begins as a rousing comeback quickly flattens out into a disappointment. C+
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