**1/2 Poster Children

RTFM

(Reprise)

In their early days, the right balance between muscle and melody eluded Champaign's Poster Children. Longtime bandmates Richard Valentin (guitar/vocals) and Rosanne Marshack (bass/vocals) toyed with everything from ironic ska pop to art-damaged post-punk on their '88 debut before hooking up with Chicago's captain of crunch Steve Albini for two harder-hitting but not quite tuneful enough discs. Finally, on 1995's Junior Citizen, they fused skewed hooks to abraded metallic guitars.

RTFM (short for "Read the Fucking Manual") drops stronger hints of the dystopic futurism that cropped up on Junior Citizen -- especially on the angular, vaguely apocalyptic "21st Century" and the robotic "Dream Small." The crowd noise at the end of "Music of America" brings to mind Rush's junior-high stoner classic "Spirit of the Radio." But the song's bristling radio-as-the-opiate-of-the-masses sentiments echo Elvis Costello's bitter, anti-airwaves rant "Radio, Radio." And the album as a whole finds the band closer than ever before to discovering the secret to the mass appeal of those numbers.

-- Matt Ashare