Pat Dinizio, The Smithereens' singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist, can't help it. With his sad-sack demeanor, nerdy goatee and my-dog-just-died singing style, he's the archetype of the awkward, insecure loner who becomes more successful than anyone ever imagined – and still can't approach his dream girl. It's a badge he wore proudly on the band's 1986 Enigma debut, Especially for You, in which being "alone at midnight" and "in a lonely place" was a way of life. So it's hardly shocking that the popularity of that album – which elevated the Smithereens from bar-band status to MTV semistardom – hasn't done much for DiNizio's self-confidence.

Green Thoughts is a less-than-jubilant follow-up that prevails almost in spite of itself. Take the first cut, "Only a Memory." Opening with a crackle of feedback from guitarist Jim Babjak, the band transforms itself into a battering ram, led by Babjak's lashing, Dave Davies-style guitars and drummer Dennis Diken's battery of rim shots. But DiNizio, who wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, pays that attack no mind. "Now I feel much too weak to live," he moans, "and I've got nothing left to give." Elsewhere, the song titles tell the story: "House We Used to Live In," "Drown in My Own Tears," "Deep Black." Halfway through side two, on "Elaine," DiNizio is still singing, "I think that I'd rather be dead than to be this lonely."

Such lonely-guy reflections may add up to something of an Eighties Pet Sounds, but Green Thoughts is anything but musically regressive. Almost as if to compensate for DiNizio's gloomy outlook – and perhaps to dispense with their reputation as Sixties revisionists – Babjak, Diken and bassist Mike Mesaros are in a much feistier mood. Reserving the pseudo-Merseybeat touches for only a few cuts (like the folk-rockish "Something New"), producer Don Dixon instead uses Especially for You's cathartic "Behind the Wall of Sleep" as a starting point. The band responds to the challenge, turning "House We Used to Live In," "The World We Know" and "Drown in My Own Tears" into utterly contemporary wall-of-guitar onslaughts.

That's not to say the band doesn't slip back into some of the overly retro moves that marred Especially for You. "Elaine," which snaps like an old Top Forty single, is saddled with a jangly twelve-string guitar so clichéd that it grows mold as you listen to it. The album's only hopeful love song, "If the Sun Doesn't Shine," uses Beach Boys-style harmonies that are gorgeously rendered but nonetheless banal. Still, even if Pat DiNizio isn't the type of guy you'd invite to your party, Green Thoughts is the kind of album you'll want to bring along. (RS 523)

DAVID BROWNE