Last year, Bronski Beat's debut LP gave gay consciousness the musical voice it always deserved. Anyone could get off on the band's brilliantly propulsive sound, but at root this was music by gay people, about gay people – and the best of its kind ever made. That's why its most significant score was in the gay bars and dance clubs it dominated all year. Jimmy Somerville's falsetto, especially, represented both a clarion call for political equality and an unbridled outburst of sexual ecstasy.

But now Somerville has left, replaced by new singer John Jon. In a way, this switch was potentially fortuitous. As arresting as Somerville's voice was for the length of one LP, it's a limited instrument that could well have seemed redundant by LP number two. Jon, on the other hand, has a more flexible pop voice. It may not be as individual as Somerville's, but it picks up significant character from the band's sharply defined political profile.

Jon's more conventional pop voice seems to have encouraged the group to explore broader melodic structures, though not always successfully. While the first LP sustained a dark disco mood, the new one introduces some brighter synth-pop elements, including two ballads. Both are well constructed, but Jon doesn't give them the soul push they require. Likewise, the effect of two other well-written tracks ("C'mon! C'mon!" and the title song) is blunted by clumsy arrangements.

But the rest of the LP is every bit as powerful and unselfconscious as the band's debut, adding an agenda all its own. Many songs extend the gay-youth pep talks the first LP began, but the issue looming behind it all now is AIDS. The repression gay people experience growing up is eloquently and unsentimentally expressed in the catchy dance track "Punishment For Love" or the jazzy pop of "This Heart," but the selfrepression gay people now face in the age of the plague offers the LP's most poignant and encompassing moments.

All is not brittleness and pain, however. "Perfect Beat" communicates healthy lust and an optimistic determination against outside repression. That confidence comes charging through in the song's thrilling, obsessive rhythm and reaches fever pitch in the simple, relentless beat of "Do It." Through such numbers, Bronski Beat's new album offers much more than just exciting music. It also captures the spirit of a whole community. (RS 480)

JIM FARBER