.Robert Palmer must really regret ever making that video for ''Addicted To Love''. Forever burned into the public consciousness as the lounge lizard with the leggy backing band; few people seem to remember the time when, for blue-eyed soul, he was the great white hope and what a complex, erudite artist he really is. Unfortunately this eclecticism has kept the general public at arms length. Easy classification can't take into account his flirtations with electronica (Clues), reggae (Pressure Drop), calypso (Pride) and even proto-trance. No he's just Bobby the suit. Which is why Drive will both astound and impress... For a man who's spent much of his career as a soul singer it seems odd that only now does he get around to tackling R 'n' B in its purest form. Yet, by his own admission, he has remained ignorant of much of the Delta blues and gritty early rock 'n' roll that makes up most of this collection. Maybe that's why it sounds so fresh. There's nothing like an excess of respect to kill some music stone dead (cf: Chris Rea's worthy but dull Charley Patton homage, Dancing Down The Stony Road, and just about all of Eric Clapton's recent output), but Palmer can never give us a straight rendition. Witness the splendid rendition of Willie Dixon's ''29 Ways'' with rattling drums and middle eight consisting of Ellington's ''Caravan'' or the Tom Waits-like evisceration of Lieber and Stoller's ''Hound Dog''. People expecting the smooth crooning that's afflicted his recent crowd-pleas