After prolonged deliberation and self-imposed purdah, I can unequivocally state that I'm in favor of the '80s revival. I believe it's a profoundly wise strategy for culture mavens to encourage clean-up and salvage operations of this nature. See, as the '80s progressed, the Western World became griped by disturbing forces. We had to deploy limited resources where most needed. For the starving millions to be fed, clothed, and housed by Live Aid donations, we had to let legwarmers and "She Bop" slip by unmonitored. Finally, we're in the position to retrieve that which was, in retrospect, fun and wholesome, and erase from cultural memory that which embarrasses and distresses us.

Some might accuse me of hideous revisionism. I prefer to consider this strategy more of a revisiting. Two decades have passed since Reagan took office (okay, so we didn't do so well on the political revisiting thing), and we're now in a far calmer temperament. In short, we're not going through the cultural hormonal rush of change. We can go back, grab the great things, and lock the remainder away in the huge societal storage locker we call The Past.

Mucho Macho's second album, Death on Wild Onion Drive, is part of this retrieval process. Their first album, The Limehouse Link, reveled in old-school b-boy movements, which, naturally, guaranteed the band a support slot for the Beastie Boys. For Death on Wild Onion Drive, though, the band have scooped up their favorite synth-pop and electro moments, and spruced them up for the new decade. And sticking to Shep Pettibone and pogo-funk disco, the band succeeds admirably.

"Salsa Shark (Everybody Knows Your Name)" skids along on a bronco of a b-line, and an array of synchronized hairspray hi-hats. The vocals, distorted in the vein of Todd Edwards, add a late '90s touch which should assure club play. "She Was Nothing, Nothing Human" borrows the two-finger basslines favored by the Human League and Depeche Mode and builds a thoroughly satisfying party groove from the solid foundation. And nowhere does the band indulge in Ultravox melodramatics or the arch artiness that hallmarked Japan's duration.

Mucho Macho toy with big beat's fascination with spy flicks on "Being Right is Being Strong." But rather than just sample a reverb-heavy guitar, Mucho Macho give the high-speed, road-groping car chase melody to a sitar. Obvious update, now that we've heard it, but it takes a special ability to make us feel right at home with an altered cliché. Unpinning "Life is Fragile (Handle with Prayer)" are a few Baby Ford moments and the score of lungs within a gospel sample. The aerosol hi-hats pave the way for a scummy analog bassline which scurries up to sniff at the heals of a string section that periodically drops in to add a little PBS to this gutbucket party jam.

The lowbrow funk for middlebrow parties peaks with "Then It's Down to the Sea in Bikinis," an offering of cut-up disco as uninhibited and disorderly as anything Basement Jaxx or Mocean Worker have given us. Once again, the band have given DJs a staple.

So, after gaining our affection in the first half of Wild Onion Drive, why does the band lose it in the second? Did they irreparably distort the space-time continuum in their return voyage to the '80s? I mean, congratulations on erasing Dire Straits, lads, but what's with the lumpen plod and sub-Jermaine Jackson crooning of "Easy Living?" "Have You Ever Heard a Man Fly" juxtaposes the acoustic guitar strummings of Amon Düül's mantraphonic "Love is Peace" against the probing Moog lines of Phaedra-era Tangerine Dream. Now, being a huge German prog fan, I could appreciate such a melding. But in this advanced time of hard-disk recording, the track sounds far too calculated and processed to pass for even an approximation of tape hiss-heavy early '70s Germany.

As if in reparation, Mucho Macho close Death on Wild Onion Drive in the superb manner in which they started it. "Codebreak" is a coolly disturbed dub-echo disco cut with a hopeful, springy, melody that acts as an optimistic conclusion. In harmony with the band and their album, we conclude that, while they got more than a little scary in the middle, the '80s weren't so hideous after all. We could lament that Mucho Macho haven't spearheaded a Shriekback revival, but we can praise them for not attempting the same for Gary Numan and the Scorpions. Unlike Armand van Helden. But culture mavens will erase him when they get round to scrutinizing the '90s.

-Paul Cooper