Contrary to what the Human League, Soft Cell and their kind would have you believe, the new English pop sound is not all synthetic. The curiously named Thompson Twins – in fact, a seven-piece rhythm posse – are closer in idea, if not execution, to XTC. Like that group of art-poppers, the Twins graft abstract song hooks and quirky guitar figures to a strident funk & roll base that is lightly sweetened with synthesizers and punctuated by the offbeat rumble of disco-style percussion. The title track of their U.S. debut album, a current dance-club smash, succeeds because of the expert mix of hot neosalsa thrust and cool British distance in singer Tom Bailey's oddly metallic whine and the straight-faced snap of Peter Dodd and John Roog's guitars. But too often the band relies on its dance-floor intuition and the echoing mystery of Steve Lillywhite's atmospheric production to cover for half-formed song ideas. While nearly everything on the album is quite grooveable, only "Perfect Game" and "Another Fantasy" cut through the disco smoke screen.

The miracle of Homosapien, ex-Buzzcock Pete Shelley's solo debut, is that this one-man show–recorded with the help of computerized synthesizers – sounds remarkably organic. Shelley and producer Martin Rushent have discreetly disguised the mathematical precision of the rhythm machines and synthesizer arrangements with the meaty crunch of electric guitars and the liquid swirl of a slightly doctored twelve-string acoustic. Both "Homosapien" and its near-double, "I Don't Know What It Is," build on monster chunka-chunka beats – bass-heavy wardance patterns cut into jagged rock & roll edges by Shelley's crosscut guitars and his tremulous singing.

The romantic tension in Shelley's songs is well served by Homosapien's dance stance. The cynical bite of "Just One of Those Affairs" is matched by its punchy boogie bravado (underlined, of course, by a pumping synthesizer bass line), while the computerlike accuracy of "Guess I Must Have Been in Love with Myself" heightens the nervous tension between Shelley's tortured vocal and the fragile wash of the acoustic guitars. On most electro-pop records, the machines just replace the band; here, they do a damned good imitation. (RS 375)

DAVID FRICKE