As if to prove he realizes the imminent destruction of this escape, Jeffreys juxtaposes the song "Graveyard Rock," which incorporates the earlier pop with Linton Kwesi Johnson spewing out reggae patter. The song sounds humorous, but the words bare a deadly seriousness:

There ain't no laughter, no hereafter

There ain't no big fun, in the crash of '80 Of '81

This prepares us for the album's centerpiece. "Mystery Kids." Similar to Lou Reed's gritty portrayals of street life, it rocks hard while decrying the world's harshness.

She got no good life, they got no love life

Got no future, got no hopes or dreams;

In the cool world, in the cruel world

You're a number--you're a mystery

A long work, it subsides into a reflective passage in which background vocalists solemnly intone 'DOOM DOOM DOOM' as the showers of a solo violin fall overhead. Then it culminates in an ending chant, with an Eastern/bagpipe-style guitar riff in the Tom Verlaine tradition. Who are the mystery kids? What makes them hopeless Jeffreys never pronounces. Perhaps there is no answer.

Part two closes with "Jump Jump," which makes the necessary quantum leap in order to escape the world he has been surveying. Though decrying Les Miserables as "too serious," he accumulates similar artistic visions from all around him--Van Gogh's. Cezanne's--which represent something lasting and attractive amidst the cool cruel world; he shows the way to escape through art to a higher reality. Dedicating the song to John Lennon makes the statement even more powerful: Even death does not stop the music.

The album's coda emerges on the seven-inch e.p., containing more experimental material. It has two excellent, straightforward reggae songs recorded in London with reggae musicians, attacking hypocrisies and race riots, and a long, less happy-go-lucky, more personal, powerful version of the album's "Christine," as well as a throwaway song composed in the studio, "Lovers' Walk." There are similar superfluities on the album, like "Ghost of a Chance," but the extended length project accurately reflects Jeffreys' creative energy and vision. Daring to confront and reinterpret his own work, to create music with players of different nationalities and races, he cannot keep within the limits of a conventional album.

The 60 minutes of vivacious music here provide escape from the schlock pop and muzak-like experimentation that have recently weighed down record racks, and returns us to some unpretentious, down-home songs from the soul of America, both Black and white. Love, and the mystery of life, have enabled Jeffreys to escape the traumas in the N.Y. Post, which he reads on the album's cover; and through America's escape medium, perhaps we still have a chance, too.