I really don't want the 1980s to come back; I mean, Reaganomics, nightmares from The Day After, being cursed with eyeglasses and braces. But, I gotta confess, listening to new bands cut from the same parachute-pants cloth as The Cars, Gary Numan, Devo, Kraftwerk, Erasure, and other '80s synth-pop giants has at least made me wish I could travel back to that Decade of XS. The music was probably the era's best attribute: a marriage in which technology and talent complemented each other, right before the unchecked powerlust that results from matrimony in the Church of the Marketplace drove technology to murder its gentle mate. Even the formulaic, plastic, sinisterly narcotizing handiwork of OMD can still move me to revisit yesteryear -- to listen with fresh ears to real '80s music, not its recent revival. There's just something forced and phony about most of this beloved new new wave stuff from wildly popular '80s-worshiping contemporary bands like British Sea Power, I Am the World Trade Center, and Interpol. And it's not as if I'm discounting their music based solely on their albums' release dates -- even the most cursory listen reveals layers of contrivance and aesthetic fraudulence, all, of course, in the guise of sincere homage or originality.

The breaking news is that today is not 1980. Truly progressive pop music is not just limited to the clubs, record stores, and late-night MTV shows; a lot of it appears on the mainstream airwaves. (Don't believe me? Then you must never have heard of Radiohead, Outkast, Nirvana, Missy Elliot, or Beck.) Good songwriting has consequently become less accountable to the old verse-chorus-verse paradigm. The textures of these songs have also changed, becoming more prismatic and full-bodied. That's why it's kind of weird listening to a flawless new recording of an ancient synthesizer being played in Gary Numan's tentative, faltering style. Numan played what he did, the way he did, because he didn't know any better. The new new wave musician emulates Numan -- in choice of instrument and delivery -- because the new new waver is (unintentionally or not) preying on our sympathies. If you're listening to his music, he thinks, then you're probably the type of person (aged 18-34) who's also fond of its source material.

Some brilliant nugget of profundity probably lies buried beneath all this retro-activity. Like, maybe current artists are reverting to old, less-evolved styles of playing, arranging, and recording in response to the ever-quickening pace of music technology -- just to slow everything down a bit, to be able to enjoy or simply make sense of it all. Or maybe current artists, in their perpetual search for wily "authenticity," believe that by hewing to some nearly obsolete and unrefined aesthetic principle, they're rebutting today's stereotypical superficialities (e.g., Britney, Nickelback, American Idol, etc.). Whatever the case, some new new wavers are giving the mystery some thought on new recordings. A few eloquently. One eloquently from right here in town.

(Midnight) Oil Up Those Pipes

On [daryl]'s latest e.p., Uneven Surfaces, the band reaches back into new wave while focusing on tomorrow's horizon and comes up with something entirely fresh. The record is all huge synth one-liners, gratuitously crude guitar work, and vocal exhortations in place of melodies, framed by a certain rough Oughties-era discipline that asserts itself in the jiving punk time signatures, droll lyrics, and plain old energetic loudness. "Graffiti" even pulls off the seemingly impossible coup of maintaining its integrity while quoting a handful of '80s-era motifs -- the way The Cars' guitarist Elliot Easton could fill cavernous holes in a song by judiciously placing two or three immaculate notes in just the right spots; and the way A Flock of Seagulls layered a few measly instruments on top of one another and arrived at a sonic impasto thicker and richer than 10 de Kooning canvases. It's a stunt worthy of a gold medal.

The most obvious manifestation of [daryl]'s back-to-the-future vibe, though, is frontman Dylan Silvers' storm cloud of a voice. Prominent and portentous but always ambivalent, this instrument sings the song of itself on every track, sometimes -- like a good beat -- keeping an entire song glued together. "Rooms 31 & 30," an acoustic guitar-based duet with keyboardist Angie Comley, provides the perfect, uncluttered room for Silvers' voice to balloon to magnificent size and density. What gives away his '80s fetish throughout the disc is the slightly mannerist, slightly spoken word, slightly Anglophile accent he effects. The most handy comparison is Growing Up in Public-era Lou Reed channeling Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett (not a Briton, but a native Australian -- for whatever that's worth).

For more info, contact Idol Records at www.idol-records.com or [daryl] at www.darylmusic.com. Grade: B

Werking at the Mall

[daryl]'s modern spunk-fueled new new wave travels its own path, while a lot of similar '80s-inspired music is happy just taking memory lane. Consider The Aleph, whose 10-song Live From Northpark Mall cruises Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" in an economy-sized version of Numan's proverbial "car." Blips and bleeps, tiny swarms of buzzing synths, and Melissa Adams' plaintive, über-feminine, stirringly sexy voice emerge softly from the past, producing a barely audible echo with every footfall. This tres '80s sense of foreboding hovers over the entire disc. The illustrative song is "Lazarus," a nearly five-minute-long diary entry in which Adams contemplates earth, wind, and fire, while a trance-music-like flapping beat -- which sounds like whips being cracked -- stutters steadily throughout; it disappears suddenly at the end when synthetic whalesong swallows the remainder of the song and all of its flavor. The change leaves you hollow, as if you've been duped or, worse, betrayed.

Like Kraftwerk's less repetitive compositions, this is tiny, patient, inoffensive music, the kind of tunesmithery that could have been produced in 1988. The North Texas quartet's limited use of newer styles, like skittering drum 'n' bass rolls and nearly danceable hip-hop rhythms, is suggestive less of life in the 21st century than of little lightbulbs going off in the heads of hip-hop's and drum 'n' bass' respective founders. The band's stabs at these two particular styles are -- like those of yesterday's inventive tech-savvy proponents -- rudimentary. It's almost as if The Aleph's trying too hard.

Ultimately, their failure to temper their retro-obsession makes you appreciate bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream all the more, instead of relieving you of your guilt for never having seen either in concert 25 years ago.

For more information, contact www.artificialmusicmachine.com. Grade: B

Graverobbing

The Exquisite Dead Guys are two local multi-instrumentalists who've constructed a 16-song run-on sentence written in 12 different languages on a bev nap. Ex Nihilo is ambitious, all over the stylistic map, and appears to have been recorded on somebody's answering machine. What places this disc firmly in the '80s songbook -- between the parlor and the party -- is the iron-fisted emphasis on pure pop that's so sunshiny it burns your brain. There's a lot of piano, a lot of show tune-y melodies (delivered, incidentally, not by svelte and swift voices but by choral couch potatoes), and a whole lotta lo-fi skullduggery. The low, gruff, dissonant voice crawling its way through brilliantly baroque tunes like "Underground" and "Smoke" smacks of coerced irony, while the jaunty "White Picket Fence" and the resiliently cheery "Strawberry Alarm Clock" trot out Elton John and the members of Haircut 100 to flog them with wet tulips.

One ringing endorsement: After one listen, I honestly couldn't tell whether Ex Nihilo was a joke. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and was rewarded -- begrudgingly -- for my patience. For more info, contact www.exquisitedeadguys.com. Grade: C