STEPMOTHERS-You Were Never My Age (Posh Boy):: Buzzsaw punk as an ideal (you don�t necessarily parrot in yer own jagged rock), say these L.A.�s-finest Stepmothers. Shrill, jangling, nervous, poppy-edged stuff, like if Dino, Desi, & Billy had had their pimply political consciousnesses raised 29 eons or so since 1966. Yeh, right, except that the Stepmothers also have some abso-Limey quest (try on the Clash or Jam here) in the backs of their earnest brains & homemade rebel songs. Lita Ford cameos, the obligatory Fowley number sounds decent, and the Stepmothers cover �To Sir With Love� (as in Lulupalooza) with defiantly stunning heavy-metal punk irony. A subversive combo(nation). R.R.

DEWEY REDMAN-Soundsigns (Gal axy):: Tenor saxist Redman, of Ornette Coleman/Keith Jarrett/Old And New Dreams fame, rarely gets to release an album under his own name but when he does, you know it�s going to be varied and strange. Soundsigns� two best cuts are a straight ahead romp thru Miles Davis� bebop classic �Half Nelson� and an eerie collage of space doodles spotlighting harp and saw.. .the other two cuts have distinct personalities too, one being a lugubrious stretch of free verse tonalities for tenor and two basses, the other a ballad that begins �lovely� and then grows increasingly more agitated and ugly. A full program of attitudes for the adventuresome listener. Or, sympathetic resonances for marginally hostile abstractionists. Or... R.C.W.