RATS FACE COLD WIND

“IN THE LONG GRASS.” The Boomtown Rats. Columbia. The integrity of Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats booms through this new album, the band’s first in more than two years. There is not so much as an attempt at a hit single here--just a succession of edgy tunes and anthems with a strong, cobweb-clearing sense of renewed purpose. The Rats avoid sanctimonious message-rock, taking a more personal tack against social and political hypocrisy--as in a stirring us-and-them outcry, “A Hold of Me,” in which Geldof wails “they’ll never get a hold of me!”

Here, the measure of the Rats’ maturity lies in a thoughtful assessment of the complexities. “The only act of revolution left/In a collective world/Is thinking for yourself,” Geldof proclaims in “Hard Times,” and the urgency of taking responsibility for one’s self--against the grain of one’s weaknesses--is at the heart of the album. Musically, this is well conveyed by the Rats’ abrasive, industrial-noise playing, which pits the melodic contour of the songs against a tough wall of sound. Yet the lyrical flights of saxophone and the playful reggae-funk nattering of some of the arrangements afford relief.

But just as Geldof is the Rats’ artistic lynchpin--and it was his determined social conscience that led his fellow British rockers through the visionary Band Aid session for African hunger relief--he is also their commercial albatross. Too often, his lyrics and his singing seem mannered, lacking in stylistic direction.

Still, neither that nor the inelegant density of Geldof’s writing seems calculated or phony. Successful and beloved in their own country, the Rats are, as ever, up against the cold, crass wind of the American pop market. They’re not pretty, and they don’t care.