In the midst of the most fractious year in recent rock & toll annals, Men at Work burst onto the 1982 music scene like a squadron of Australian Philip Habibs. Everybody liked them. Album-oriented-radio adherents appreciated the guitar-based sound of Business as Usual, young MTV watchers got off on their endearingly zany video personae, and critics cited their reggae-flecked, Police-as-a-five-piece arrangements. I went to a party at a New York dance club where twenty minutes of Fifties classics was interrupted by two Men at Work cuts–and no one sat down. High praise, in my book.

Cargo, the band's second LP, may lack a track with the body-slamming intensity of "Who Can It Be Now" and "Down Under," but song for song, it is a stronger overall effort than Business as Usual. For while Cargo continues to dish out ample portions of the meat-and-potatoes rock & roll that first grabbed U.S. ears last year, it also extends, both lyrically and instrumentally, the darker side of Men at Work's music.

On Cargo, the sense of mild paranoia that informed "Who Can It Be Now" has developed into outright solipsism. "No one knows what I can see and/What I see it pleases me on my roof," ruminates vocalist and chief writer Colin Hay in "Upstairs in My House," and that sentiment pervades the record: a childlike fear of the uncertainties of the outside world and a retreat into a fantasy land of military battles, bizarre science laboratories–anything to fend off reality. You won't find songs about women or love or being on the road on Cargo; these guys have too much trouble leaving the house.

The Men's wariness is best expressed in "Overkill": "I can't get to sleep/I think about the implications," frets Hay in this melancholy raveup. "I worry over situations/I know will be all right/Perhaps it's just imagination." He may appear to be bemoaning his troubles in words more befitting an L.A. singer/songwriter, but the tempo is fast and the band choogles away.

The album's mood is heightened by Peter McIan's production. Ominous footsteps and lab sounds percolate in "Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive," a puckish tale of double identity. The rock-solid rhythm section of John Rees and Jerry Speiser thumps with near-manic urgency, while Greg Ham's unobtrusive flutes and saxes suggest the sort of mental processes that can conjure up the scenarios of "It's a Mistake" ("Tell us, General, is it party time?/If it is, can we all come?") or the sizzling "High Wire" ("Blood on the pillow on my bed/Explains the pain that's in my head.")

But not all of Cargo is doomy portentousness. Second-string writer Ron Strykert – sort of the George Harrison of the bunch – contributes "Settle Down My Boy," a lovely fingerpicking tune that offers both sides of the you-gotta-grow-up dilemma in a wistful, sympathetic setting. Another Strykert composition, "I Like To," is the album's only real clinker, being padded out with needlessly raucous soloing. But even Strykert's protagonist has to "watch the telly/With the sound turned down."

The emotions that play themselves out on Cargo and the energy that gets unleashed in the process remind me of stories I've read about Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman: bright kids who were brought up in sheltered environments and then had to create elaborate, entertaining fantasy worlds to inhabit. In the wrong person's psyche, the kind of isolation that Cargo delineates can turn into neurosis; here, it's foot-tapping fun. No wonder everyone likes them. (RS 394)

CHRISTOPHER CONNELLY