Despite the heavy irony of its title, Solid Gold does have a presold audience: rock fans who consider themselves safely outside the mainstream and revel in music that faces up to what they assume are unpopular truths. These fans will flock to the second album from a stern, relentless band of social critics like the Gang of Four, but the unconverted masses need more persuasion. And, at least occasionally, the Gang of Four does deliver postpunk manifestos that are accessible to everyone. The gist of Solid Gold's argument comes in the first three cuts, in which drummer Hugo Burnham, bassist Dave Allen, guitarist Andy Gill and singer Jon King work as a varied, flexible unit, full of ideas.

"Paralysed" begins with a halting sequence of raspy guitar chords that suggests a dazed person trying to speak clearly. When the song breaks into a thick, bass-heavy tromp, King recites the bitter reflections of an Everyman laborer sucked dry by the system and thrown on the dole. This despairing tale includes the Gang of Four's summary of the blues: "History is the reason I'm washed up."

Momentum keeps building with "What We All Want," one of the group's most fluid and appealing numbers. It's driven by Gill's muttering guitar line and produces a dense, kinetic rumble that's perfectly suited to today's FM radio. While King coolly catalogs the restless urges that pester our value-poor lives, Allen, Burnham and Gill bend and amplify their rhythmic accents in a manner borrowed from extended funk jams and dub reggae: i.e., just often enough to raise interest by snagging the beat.

The clincher, though, comes with "Why Theory?," which revolves around a two-note melodica riff that echoes the childlike insistence in King's voice. A thoroughly abstract song-as-thesis, "Why Theory?" contains the vaguely Marxist kernel of the Gang of Four's insight: humanity is the unconscious product of its social net ("We've all got opinions/Where do they come from?/Each day seems like a natural fact"). This damns the celebrated stolen moments of pop-music freedom as firmly as John Lydon does, but without his smirking glee. And Graham Parker, for instance, has been saving the same thing on a gut level all along. Still, for the duration of "Why Theory?," the Gang of Four seems to have found a higher calling for rock & roll: didactics you can dance to.

After this three-pronged assault, however, a leaden obviousness takes over (especially on side two), and even the converted will notice that Solid Gold lacks the vivid details and consistently confident material that gave last year's Entertainment! its impact, whether one agreed with it or not. The Gang of Four skewers too many standard villains<>McDonald's in "Cheeseburger," resurgent Fascists in "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time"<>to lend such compositions a fresh edge, even when their flair for the big beat is overpowering. Andy Gill and Jon King's rejection of character nuance and simple, messy pleasures cuts them off from the rock mainstream all right, but it also prevents shared, everyday experiences. Worse, it makes the band members seem as distanced and bland as any arena-rock superstars. The novelty of passionate rock & rollers who are never personal has worn off. The Gang of Four should learn that all tension and no release makes Jack and Jill listen to the Clash instead.