It'd be a disservice to the considerable inventiveness and daring of Daryl Hall and John Oates to suggest that after ten years of trying, they'd finally hit on a perfectly tailored pop success formula. Nevertheless, their well-steeped brew of gunshot percussion, hooky daubs of synthesizer and soulful, swooping vocals – which revived their career on Voices and spawned four hit singles from their last LP, Private Eyes–is heavily in evidence on their latest effort, H₂O. But with only a few exceptions, the more austere elements of their music are unleavened by wit or generosity of spirit, and the result is a competent but off-putting album whose icy virtuosity makes Kraftwerk sound as down-home as a bluegrass band.

The LP's first track, "Maneater," sets the tone. A bouncy, hard-edged rhythm line straight from the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" gives the song a promising kickoff. But the hooks never turn up, and the musty misogyny of the lyrics ("She's deadly, man, and she could really rip your world apart") only adds to the tune's aridity. Hall dominates side one, and without John Oates' warm vocal tone and lighter touch, his world view seems cramped. You can't even dance to it. This isn't to say Hall can't be a genuinely moving singer. His gorgeous falsetto in the chorus of "One on One" manages to breathe some life into the song's tired game-of-love metaphor. In "Art of Heartbreak," he gets to blast more straightforwardly over guitar-powered orchestration. But too often, Hall's vocal flourishes don't reverberate with enough emotional force.

Fortunately, the heat gets turned up on side two. Mike Old-field's "Family Man" lets Hall and Oates percolate in a romp in the style of "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)," and "Guessing Games," with its stuttering, Casiofueled rhythms and bleeps, incites Hall to some evocative wailing. Most welcome of the lot, though, is Oates' "Italian Girls," a light, poppy lament ("I drink, I drink so much vino rosso, no more amarone") that sounds like Steely Dan having a good time, if such a thing were possible. Both the song and the performance are fun, funky and unoppressive – a particularly significant virtue on this chilly, hemmed-in LP. (RS 383)

CHRISTOPHER CONNELLY