The ska-revival bands that emerged in England a couple of years ago started with scant raw material compared with their British Invasion forebears in the mid-Sixties. Both movements reworked black music in a new context, but the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Kinks, et al., dramatized the main story line (American blues and soul), while the Specials, the Selecter, the English Beat and others merely elevated a subplot (blue beat and early reggae). This limitation became obvious when the ska groups released second albums. Following charming though cautious dance-record debuts, the Specials were at loose ends on More Specials, which showed the band edging uncomfortably toward irony and artiness, and the Selecter's Celebrate the Bullet landed them in a full-blown personality crisis: all that arose from their musical mannerisms and tepid rhythm tracks was a strangled plea for direction. The English Beat managed to avoid these pitfalls because they were inherently more impulsive and less aware of themselves as revivalists from the beginning.

The English Beat's first LP, I Just Can't Stop It, was a rambunctious cluster of singles held together by tenor saxophonist Saxa's winning, authoritative blowing and a rhythm section (bassist David Steele and drummer Everett Morton) that cared more about adventure than duplicating antique reggae. Though the group presented itself as a collective, the biracial vocal leads of Ranking Roger and David Wakeling grabbed attention by giving articulate social rage and rude-boy horniness equal weight. Among the ska bands, only the English Beat called upon raw punk to wrestle with and update their island R&B. Defiant rockers like "Twist and Crawl" and the feverish "Click Click" (with a hook that doubled the pressure in every chorus) reduced party poseurs like the B-52's to paper airplanes.

Given the recent spate of rioting in Britannia, Wha'ppen? asks the right questions: what are the fears tearing daily life apart? What are the tactics, however brutal, that everyone uses to cope? And by thinking in terms of a whole record, the English Beat leave themselves room to build suspense and plant their depth charges. The density of I Just Can't Stop It is gone, but the mature pacing of Wha'ppen? shows that the group is determined to discover a way of growing up without putting on fat.

"Doors of Your Heart" comes closest to blending sauciness and sage advice. Ranking Roger struts and strolls through the vocal, savoring the wickedly catchy chorus. His toast-rap break pitches for brotherly love by drawing sly parallels between eros and agape: everybody looks the same when the lights are out. Wha'ppen? puts teeth into its plea for unity with several dread-ridden, cautionary songs. "Monkey Murders" and "All Out to Get You" spotlight the tensions of adolescence raised to the breaking point by a society in unquiet desperation. Still, there's a bracing fervor to the music–e.g., a high-stepping Spanish guitar in "Monkey Murders" – that turns the tunes into sharp exhortations to dance all over one's troubles. "Drowning" is an eerie variation: behind a lazy beat that glides and dips like whitecaps on waves, David Wakeling and Ranking Roger spin a suicide-is-sensuous fable about a harried organization man's death fantasy. "Drowning" makes ending it all at the beach a fitting way out for one foolish enough to sell his soul to accountants.

Like I Just Can't Stop It, Wha'ppen? utilizes reggae's basic lope as a foundation for increasingly confident rhythmic experiments. "Walk Away" nods toward Motown (not as aggressively as the hopped-up "Tears of a Clown" on the debut album, though an Elvis Costello cover version of "Walk Away" would be an apt surprise). "Over and Over" builds to a tidy, enjoyable steel-band groove and is followed by the bellicose dub of "Cheated," which flays police-and-thieving media. Inevitably, Saxa guides these side trips, first blasting as loudly as Big Jay McNeely, then whispering seductively, yet always sounding like an undiscovered R&B master rather than an imitator. While Saxa's saxophone resources, particularly his low-growl ballad solos, are far from played out, the band would do well to feature more guitar picking from Wakeling or Andy Cox as a second instrumental voice.

Except in sheer pep, Wha'ppen? marks an advance for the English Beat: truly complex love-and-jealousy tales, politics that are more keenly defined. It's too bad that such a polyglot approach to pop music is as marketable in America now as Mediterranean fruit flies. Like their distant U.S. cousins, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, the English Beat have an instant-legend aura about them, weaving an eccentric path between black and white, calculation and craziness, that's hard to follow. It'd be scandalous to lose these groups from major labels, because the English Beat, especially, are still incubating their most powerful music. (RS 353)

MILO MILES