For songwriters Don and David Was, funk is the most effective means by which to explore the twitches of the modern urban mind. Their lyrics imply a kind of surveillance, following typical citizens into their homes and on their vacations, where they are likely to form a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise with Fidel Castro or kill an estranged lover. "Mere reason alone can never explain how the heart behaves" is more than a chorus on Are You O.K.? ­ it's a motto for the album's cinematic two-character plots.

The latest in the band's tradition of unlikely guest vocalists is Leonard Cohen, the Chuck Berry of maudlin acoustic music, who sounds like a cross between Orson Welles and Barry White on "Elvis' Rolls Royce," in which the voice of the King instructs Cohen to repossess the car from unappreciative

Brits and return it to Graceland. Similar adventures, only hinted at in the song titles, define "I Blew Up the United States" and "Dressed to Be Killed." The band's ...

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