It's safe to assume that the title of Soul Coughing's second release, Irresistible Bliss (Slash/Warner Bros.), is meant to be ironic. Discontent and weary anger is more to the point of M. Doughty's lyrics. The music, deeply grooved and even funky as it gets, offers the easily resistible edginess of naturally subversive talents hanging in there for the greater good. Each man has his personal warrant. Doughty, the lyricist/vocalist (and guitar player, though the guitar here is very sparse), is the poet/poseur, alternately terse and gaseous. Mark De Cli Antoni, listed as keyboard sampler, supplies both shock value and finesse. The rhythm section of Sebastian Steinberg, bass, and Yuval Gabay, drums, gives the group commercial potential (via those accessible grooves) without demeaning their considerable talent and ability. In fact, it's a pretty good album.

However, it's also their second. And since the record company sucker-punched some of the press with its late decision to delay the release for two months, I've had the rare opportunity to read a clutch of reviews of a disc before I weigh in with my own. Producer David Kahne (Fishbone, but also Tony Bennett) has been brought in to aid Bliss and presumably to lift the group further from the gritty East Coast underground of its origin. A mild taint of sellout is in the air and a few critics have sniffed deeply. Although I've tried to hear this, it seems to me that Bliss is very much like Soul Coughing's first album, only that there's less of it (20 minutes less).

But the inky cloak of avant-gardism still lies over the project, and if it seems to have grown a little threadbare, we have to factor in familiarity. These guys laid their game plan out so well on their critically acclaimed debut, Ruby Vroom (Slash/Warner Bros, 1994), that now all they (and we) have to do is follow it. Sometimes the sophomore album isn't an advance or a sellout, a revelation, or a shocking squandering of promise. Sometimes the sophomore album is basically more of the same. And sometimes that's good enough.

Doughty has described Soul Coughing as a "sort of VU meter, with Heartbreak on the left and Nonsense on the right," with the needle moving from side to side. I would add to that meter paranoia, disgust, hubris, and simple joy while admiring the admission of nonsense -- Doughty the lyricist knows that you have to keep a good stream of blarney flowing if you're to hold your own in light of the music's dedication to the unexpected flourish. At the same time, the rhythmic groove finds its corollary in his use of a repeated phrase that acts as both set-up and punch line -- the one line that makes you think the song is about to yield up greater meaning, but also the one line you ultimately end up with. Maximum pith is required. Ruby had about half a dozen of these solid one-liners, Bliss has maybe less. Two examples: "I got the will to drive myself sleepless" ("Sleepless") and "I know you're as dumb as paint" ("Paint"). Obviously, you have to hear them in context.

You also have to hear Doughty's voice, near gravelly as it moves somewhere between recital and song, sounding both happy to be taking charge (a natural showoff's voice) and emotionally ambiguous, even hollow (a theatrical voice that distracts us from how it often doesn't reveal much). This is as good as Antoni's bag of tricks, his ability to provide the mysteriously apt sound, the one that suggests the nature of the song's elusive meaning. When he sets up "Disseminated" with clarinets dancing like nervous insects (borrowed from Raymond Scott?), we know that the song's thrust is meant to be antic and shouldn't be worried over. The appropriately lethargic music of "Sleepless" arouses Antoni's wit; the arch interjections suggest someone struck by the absurdity inherent in dreaming. And the frustrated "How Many Cans" ("How many cans must I stack up/To wash you out of my consciousness") puts him into a Forbidden Planet mood, making Id-monster bleats and growls during one chorus, then going all Ariel-gentle during the next.

It's impressive how Soul Coughing managed to sound polished (but not shiny) while maintaining a large amount of what must have begun as just fucking around. This strikes me as smart fun. And I'd be satisfied -- though hesitant to write about it -- if they did it a third time, too.