On the cover of 'A Spy in the House of Love,' the House of Love's second album, appear four novels (Lolita, by Nabokov; Nausea, by Sartre; The Catcher in the Rye, by Salinger; The Spy in the House of Love, by Anais Nin), a bottle of tequila, a pack of Winstons and a dog wearing sunglasses and a kerchief. What the London group, led by the deep-thinking Guy Chadwick, forgot to include are Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love and Hate, Echo and the Bunnymen's Crocodiles, a few broken guitar strings and a lipstick – Chanel's Finale Red – left behind by some girl like a scar.

When the House of Love was recording its debut album (House of Love, from 1989), the band had too much material, and a number of songs got left off the album. A Spy in the House of Love – fifteen songs that Chadwick says "were just too good to bury" – is more like an uninhibited sequel to House of Love than an actual second album and, in fact, serves to buy the band time. In 1990, after an unrewarding tour of the States, the original lead guitarist, Terry Bickers, left and Chadwick considered dissolving the group. But new guitarist Simon Walker and a by-invitation tour of France and Greece changed Chadwick's mind; the second album proper is due next year.

Meanwhile, Spy – which displays a style more accessible than the Kitchens of Distinction's, less trendy than the La's' – is as good a mile marker as any in the evolution of British art rock. Singer-song-writer-guitarist Chadwick is a poetic fellow with extraordinarily high cheekbones and a voice that falls from a whisper to a sexy growl then way down into the lower registers; the band – guitarist Walker, drummer Pete Evans and bassist Chris Groothuizen – is deft, alternately gritty, jangly and atmospheric. On "D-Song '89," Chadwick spits "Marry and be damned" and sounds uncannily like Leonard Cohen backed by a garage band. At its truest, on "Scratched Inside" ("I feel best I've ever felt, so how come I feel so scratched inside"), the House is at once romantically fixated and bitter. Now that the Smiths are gone and the Bunnymen are crippled, the House of Love carries the angst-rock baton. (RS 612)

CHRISTIAN WRIGHT