"I went to Africa for four months," says Geldof, who focused on trying to understand the experiences of ordinary Africans. "Within...

If eclecticism were a crime, there'd be enough evidence on Mondo Bongo to put the Boomtown Rats away for life. Like last year's The Fine Art of Surfacing, the new LP is an intoxicating mixture of pop and punk. It's an occasionally daft but always dazzling array of everything from vanilla reggae ("Banana Republic," actually a satiric poke at the Northern Ireland mess) to electro-mantra ("This Is My...

Thematically, paranoia rears its nasty head an awful lot here: in "Someone's Looking at You," "Nothing Happened Today" and the schizophrenic exhibitionism of "Having My Picture Taken." This is especially true in "I Don't Like Mondays," the Boomtown Rats' controversial British smash in which the ostentatious wash of violins strikes a soap-operatic contrast with the unsettling notion of a young girl...