Tonio K's first album, "Life in the Foodchain" (Epic JE 35545) -- besides being the greatest record ever made -- struck a rather interesting balance between big yucks and existential despair. The music and lyrics were both hysterically funny, but the songs were also unflinchingly truthful, even pitiless. His new Arista album, "Amerika," has jokes that are much less obvious and a considerably darker overall tone. If there is a theme to this one, it's that the world is going to hell in a handcart somewhat faster than anticipated.

Hard-core Tonio K. people may count this more urgent new stance of his a disappointment (no cameo vocal appearances by Joan of Arc on this record!), but I find it helps put his artistry in better perspective: the man is not primarily a comedian. But, then again, neither was Jonathan Swift.

Lest all this scare anyone off, however, be assured that the album -- subtitled "Cars, Guitars, and Teenage Violence" -- deals with more than just global nuclear holocaust. Tonio K. is not, as was said of the late Phil Ochs, a one-issue man. Although the eleven songs here do have certain common thematic underpinnings, they are rather varied. One Big Happy Family, for example, is a mordant, vaguely New Wave-ish ditty that gives an international catalog, Randy Newman style, of bigotries ("The French hate everybody," Tonio observes, "but that's just part of being French"). The sorry state of current relations between the sexes is explored in Go Away, in which our hero encounters an old girl friend who on the evidence presented is probably not a nice person; it's the most spiteful diatribe since, oh, Dylan's Positively Fourth Street.

Then there's a surrealistic account of teenage heartbreak, The Night Fast Rodney Weni Crazy; (after a murderous spree that culminates in his driving his Chevy into the high-school men's room, Rodney justifies himself with the explanation -- in German, no less --that his girl's parents were really Martians); a heartfelt, deliberately confusing tribute to Dada pioneer Kurt Schwitters (Let Us Join Together in a Tune); and an extremely effective protest song, Trouble, that rocks as hard as anything I've heard recently -- and also gives producer/back-up player Nick van Maarth an excuse to imitate a police siren on slide guitar.  

The album's masterpiece, and probably Tonio K.'s most fully realized song to date, is Say Goodbye, in which the various conflicting elements of his style come together in one anguished, chilling elegy. Formally, it's a classic-style Sixties r-&-b ballad, and Tonio and guest vocalist Ike Willis are absolutely superb in it; they sound like Sam and Dave as Biblical prophets howling in the wilderness, or like the greatest soul singers who ever lived. The lyrics are considerably more contemporary, being a devastating "prayer for the age of innocence." Anybody who can listen to Tonio's final spoken litany of goodbyes at the end without being moved is probably better off with Barry Manilow. Be warned: this is strong stuff.

Not everything on "Amerika" is on the same exalted level, of course; I'm not sure we could take it if it were. But enough is within shooting distance that no right-thinking young adult should be without it for another moment. In its rather more cerebral way, "Amerika" is as uplifitng and uncompromising as anything the Clash has ever done -- which is to say that it's great rock-and-roll -- as well as being considerably wittier. More and more it strikes me that Tonio K. is one of the last truly sane people left, in or out of the music business. "I'm just looking." he sings at one point, for a girl "who can laugh at the fact that there ain't nothing funny." I hope he finds one. In the meantime, rest assured that, like its predecessor, "Amerika" is the greatest record ever made.

TONIO K.: Amerika. Tonio K. (vocals, guitar); other musicians. One Big (Happy) Family; Say Goodbye; Sons of the Revoltion; Go Away; Cinderella's Baby; Trouble; Girl Crazy; I'll Buy It; The Night Fast Rodney Went Crazy; Merzsuite-Let Us Join Together in a Tune, Umore/Futt Futt Futt/Umore. ARISTA