No Heartbeat in Adult-Proof New Kids : * NW KIDS ON THE BLOCK “Step by Step” <i> Columbi</i> a: <i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic).</i>

At long last: New Kids on the Block answer their critics!

“Somebody said somebody wouldn’t last too long,” begins “Games,” the funkiest song on the fourth album by the Beantown posse (as they refer to themselves in their fleeting street vernacular mode). Fifteen million albums, singles and home videos later, somebody, it’s meant to be clear, was wrong.

“Somebody said somebody was all a front / Somebody’s still telling junk,” rap the Kids in rare mock-anger:

When you put us down

It ain’t gonna get you nowhere...

You dissin’ the mission

That’s really righteous

We gotta fight this.

This righteous fight isn’t exactly “Fight the Power.” And the group’s much-dissed “mission” remains vague, unless it has something to do with helping the phone company stay in business with the Kids’ recorded 900 line. In any event, the paranoia hardly seems necessary: This is a teen vocal group that is absolutely critic-proof, and probably even adult-proof at that.

The New Kids appeal to the very youngest of demographics, of course--mostly a jury of their young teen and pre-teen sub-peers, it’s clear from the fans in their new home video, also called “Step by Step” (CMV Enterprises). Lyrically and musically, their dance-pop songs are the very model of lack of sophistication, distilling every naive pop cliche about the power of love possible in a falsetto-filled quasi-R&B; format.

The more fawning love songs conjure up the wide-eyed wonder of first-time pubescent romance, with the occasional post-breakup tirade thrown in to ensure a sense of premature worldliness. But this is the new New Kids, who--we keep learning from the interview footage in the video--make great creative strides with each album.

Top 40 radio programmers have reported a backlash against the group among older (as in old enough to drive) listeners, and a promise was made by New Kids representatives that this album would show off a “more mature sound.” By that, it turns out, the reps merely meant that it appropriates even more black music styles than its predecessors. (And a previously untapped white genre or two for good measure.)

Dance-pep pop and washed-out synthesizer ballads are still the order of the day (producer/writer/Svengali Maurice Starr seems to have a Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis complex). But this time there’s more: “Happy Birthday” is a ‘50s-style doo-wop number. Two tracks feature raps in distinctly black dialects. “Stay With Me Baby” is done in a reggae style--which the slower among us might miss were it not sung with a thick, patronizing Jamaican accent, complete with asides like, “We could have some fun with this one, mon!”

If this increased scope and ambition sounds worthy of at least a little of the “Sgt. Pepper”-style applause they work into “Tonight,” their embarrassingly overt Beatles homage, Starr and his charges show not the slightest genuine affection for any of these forms, other than perhaps the joy of opportunistic appropriation.

Any older pop fan risks being a fogy wishing to deny a younger generation its disposable pop pleasures, but this music offers neither the pleasures of pure, skilled craft nor a discernible human heartbeat. Tell Pete Townshend the news: The Kids aren’t all right.

The home video is superior, for curious adults as well as fans: Though you have to sit through repetitive interviews, the concert footage that takes up about a third of the 50-minute program does show where their considerable charisma lies in a way the music alone doesn’t offer a clue to.