Whereas rock video was originally a means of enhancing the music, the Fixx have turned the equation around. With vaguely foreboding bad-dream imagery drifting through every song, Reach the Beach seems more a series of treatments for MTV than anything else.

Like many British synth bands, the Fixx have managed to parlay a lightweight microchip-pop sensibility into a chart-topping formula, complementing the yearning vagaries of their music with a dollop of existential angst in the lyrics. Their debut album, Shuttered Room, though hardly a barn burner itself, did hint at good things to come, but Reach the Beach founders in the doldrums, and the result is an album of generic New Wave Muzak more suitable for airports and dentists' waiting rooms than dance clubs.

Reach the Beach does have a few winning moments. With its sharp, step-to-it beat, "Running" manages to create a mood of gripping unease, and "Privilege," displaying the only hint of humor on the LP, is just oddball enough to merit attention. But songs like "Opinions" should be saved for funerals, "Sign of Fire" is absolutely colorless, and the otherwise absorbing lyrical sway of "Outside" is rudely mangled by the flat, whomping beat shoved to the front of the mix. In their infinite cool, the Fixx have crafted a detached, passionless product that is every bit as perfunctory and unexciting as the bar code on the record's jacket. (RS 405)

ERROL SOMAY