You can't always judge a band by its haircuts. Take the Thompson Twins: on the surface they're the perfect example of vintage 1985 pop, three designer-style cartoon characters lip-syncing breathlessly trendy technoditties. And sure enough, their fourth U.S. release is crammed full of relentless melodies, singalong choruses, swooning synths, percussive exotica and the sort of hooks that should be baited with Excedrin. But it also contains actual guitar solos – groovy, grotesquely distorted ones – and deceptively simple lyrics that offer love and optimism as an answer to drug addiction, nuclear war, racial strife and loneliness. On Here's to Future Days, the closet door opens and out come ... three unrepentant old hippies?

Anyone familiar with the Thompsons' prehit history shouldn't be surprised. The group began in 1977 as a communal seven-piece funk unit more aligned with radicals like the Slits and the Pop Group than with the New Romantics. It wasn't until five years later, when the offhand "In the Name of Love" crossed over from dance floors to boom boxes and back again, that the Twins trimmed down to a trio – Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway – and set their sights on the top of the charts. Their aim proved true last year when the beautifully simple "Hold Me Now" became a worldwide hit and the accompanying videos for the Into the Gap LP propelled the Thompsons into teenage America's consciousness.

So how do you follow up a breakthrough? Securing Nile Rodgers' services as producer is one safe bet, and under his steady eye the Twins have polished and expanded their formula without missing a beat. True, none of the new songs is quite the equal of "Hold Me Now," but compared with their hit-or-miss earlier albums, Here's to Future Days is a model of consistency. And, oh yeah, there might be a couple of singles in there somewhere.

The first of those, "Lay Your Hands on Me," is the closest the Thompsons come to a retread. Actually, it was originally released last year to tide over English fans between albums, and it reappears here with a slightly remixed chorus. Frankly, it's pretty wet: lead singer Tom Bailey mopes around a cloying little xylophone-and-piano melody, feeling sorry for himself, until he's brushed by the loved one's redemptive touch and the wind-tunnel chorale kicks in with the chorus: "OH! LAY! YOUR! HANDS!" When Tom answers that with "ooooooooooh," et cetera, it's wimpiness at its most winsome.

More interesting is the Twins' current English single, "Don't Mess with Doctor Dream." It's a fairly scabrous warning about the pleasure and pain of heroin addiction. Powerful without being preachy, it's both a response to the growing problem among unemployed British youngsters and a challenge from Alannah Currie, who's been enough involved to know the horror. The lyrics' directness ("He will bring you to your knees") is matched by a rhythmic intensity missing from even their most funkified singles. That's a tribute to Nile Rodgers' growing acumen in the control booth. Rather than tack on the unmistakable pile-driving Chic sound ("Like a Virgin," "Let's Dance"), he accentuates what's already in the Thompsons' bag of tricks. Their harmonies are clarified and strengthened while the momentum of all that incidental percussion gets increased with well-placed horns and a spare but driving drum track. After a few listens, even the nutty Cheetah-on-the-vocoder gimmick becomes downright haunting.

Throughout the album, Alannah Currie's lyrics take twists and turns into territory you'd hardly expect such a fizzy pop trio to tread. "Future Days" sets a vague optimistic philosophy (the dread disease known as Howard Jones-itis) to a chain-gang chant amid amusing synth burbles, but the second side is a bit of a shock. Can you imagine, say, the Power Station giving it all away for love if they became "King for a Day"? Tears for Fears warning racists and warmongers to look out because "Love Is the Law"? These songs are both medium-paced funk rockers with percussive riffs that are as addictive as junk food and tightly harmonized choruses that pound right into your skull. The only way to resist is with a hard hat.

In fact, hitting listeners over the head with hooks has always been a Thompson Twins trademark. So it's something of a relief (not to mention a risk) that they're trying for more subtle effects now. "You Killed the Clown" is an electronic torch song that really shouldn't work – it plods along until, just as it's about to sink under its own pretentious weight, somebody hits a bluesy vamp on a guitar. That feels so familiar yet sounds so alien you've got to stick around to hear it on the next verse. And on "Roll Over" they actually desert the verse-chorus structure for a rolling narrative about a couple of derelict lovers. It's spiced by Bailey's unusually casual vocal and guest guitarist Steve Stevens' lewd lead. Up until now, Stevens has been best known as Billy Idol's songwriting partner and stage foil, but if the economical mayhem he churns out here is any indication – well, if I were Eddie Van Halen, I'd be practicing a lot.

The payoff comes on the unlikely cover of the Beatles' "Revolution" that closes side one. Stevens captures all the abandon of the original but alters it just enough to put his own metallic stamp on it. Now the idea of a sensitive plant like Tom Bailey tackling John Lennon may seem a bit absurd, but he almost manages to pull it off with some help from his sidekicks. The result may not be profound, but it's hardly pointless. Hearing them run joyfully through seventeen-year-old lyrics about close-minded radicals, I can't help thinking about people who revere every note played in the Sixties yet can't abide modern pop. To some, even mentioning the Thompson Twins in the same breath as the Beatles is an outrageous act of sacrilege. But hey, a lot of people made fun of their haircuts, too. (RS 460)

MARK COLEMAN