Starting with its title, the New Jersey cult band's third album evidences all the laconic ambivalence toward the big time we've come to expect from a band that took six years between its first two albums. Amid the typically fervent strumming and rhythms of "The Undertow," singer-guitarist Glenn Mercer deadpans, "I'm being tempted and I don't mind it." For the Feelies, that amounts to their version of "I'm So Excited."

In many ways, Only Life doesn't deviate much from earlier Feelies recordings. Driven by the interlocking guitars of Mercer and Bill Million, the band constructs waves of beautiful hypnotic drone, with subtle tempo shifts and percussion accents that ripple through the arrangements. But whereas 1986's near-pastoral album The Good Earth found the band calmly taking stock of itself, most of the best moments on Only Life – the utterly exhilarating love song "Higher Ground," the confident swagger of "For Awhile" – bring back the lurching feel of the band's extraordinary 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms. The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On" may not be the most imaginative choice of covers, but it serves to underscore the quintet's renewed rock & roll drive.

As usual, Mercer and Million's elliptical lyrics amount to a collection of strung-together phrases. Mercer's slashing lead lines in "Too Far Gone," for instance, say more than its sketchy lyrics about a man on the run. But the larger message behind Only Life is that the Feelies are ready to meet the world head-on – sort of. "Can't make compromises/Can't wait for the surprises," Mercer sings in "Too Much." The Feelies may want it both ways, but they wouldn't be the Feelies otherwise. (RS 538)

DAVID BROWNE