The Go-Go's know better. The fear and isolation that defined girl groups hardly exist in their world. In their joyous harmony vocals and insistent "we," they've got a community – hip kids in "We Got the Beat," glamorous natives in "This Town" – and enough self-reliance and sass to take romance as comedy, not tragedy. Where an Orion would have been devastated by jealous rumors, the Go-Go's could care less in "Our Lips Are Sealed." And they hardly expect sympathy for "Skidmarks on My Heart": if the boyfriend prefers his car to his girl, it's his loss.

So there's not much angst or high drama on Beauty and the Beat. (When, for form's sake, the Go-Go's try it in "How Much More," it's not very convincing.) Instead, these women offer exuberance backed by precision. Their songs, mostly written or cowritten by guitarist Charlotte Caffey, provide a quick course in power pop. They balance repetition and surprise, long vocal lines and countermelodies, against choppy fills. While the Go-Go's have the same surf-British Invasion roots as a thousand other plural-noun bands, they resist formulas, breaking up the tunes with skipped beats ("This Town"), mode changes ("Lust to Love") or extended, hanging-in-air pauses ("Automatic"). And taking boy-girl encounters as lightly as they do makes it possible for them to address topics like Everyteen's urge to "get dressed up/And messed up/Blow our cares away."

Beauty and the Beat is a solid, likable debut. Since the Go-Go's have neatly ignored typecasting by sex, their next step is obvious: to free themselves of teenage stereo-types as well. The album's quirkier numbers, particularly "Automatic" and "Can't Stop the World," suggest that the Go-Go's are ready to do that any time they want.