"Our main objective then was the same as now. Get f**king famous, take toads of drugs and be The Beatles." --Martin Carr

Just when you fear the world is being over-run by excesses such as disco or grunge, a British band hits the charts with melody, lyrics, and vocal harmonies, reinstating

the primacy of the song well written and well played. Better yet, Brit popsters imbue their work with an un-equalled sense of history; each group below cadges some part of its sound from one or both sides of the pond. The one problem with Britpop is encapsulated in Martin Carr's quote above: There was only one Beatles, and there will never be another. And the expectations Britpop totes around can be the undoing of an otherwise very goodband. The Beatles made Britain safe for rock and roll. However, thankfully, very few modern Brit bands make safe rock and roll.

Pulp, Different Class (Island): Jarvis Cocker's disc-length homage to Bowie/Ziggy Stardust flows gently like the cosmic currents that powered the Spiders from Mars. From the signature "Mis-Shapes" to Major Tom's faint signal, "Sorted for E's and Wizz," Pulp captures a pop essence with humor and finesse. Cocker has a delightfully wicked sense of irony, "I wrote this song two hours before we met/I didn't know your name or what you looked like yet" ("Something Changed"). But he doesn't get carried away with it. "Common People" culminates with a frontal admonition to a slumming rich bitch, "You'll never watch your life slide out of view/ and dance and drink and screw/'cos there's nothing else to do ..." This excellent disc stands out in its class.

Kula Shaker, K (Columbia): Crispian Mills is a young man with a troubled mom, actress Haley, a knighted grandfather, actor John, and a very strange debut record. Without indulging in a too-long explanation, Kula Shaker reveres the letter "k", hence the album's name and the quirky cover art: The name of virtually every person or thing begins with that letter. The CD is an explosive cache of retropop rivalled only by the Stone Roses' quirky, eponymous debut some years ago.

"Hey Dude" is a Mott the Hoople rave-up that starts with a chunky wah-wah guitar percussing over a tom-tom-heavy downbeat and a blitz of heavily reverbed vocals. Lyrically, it mystifies, "I don't know what he was talking about, but I think I have an idea ..." Well, either you do or you don't, and this disc overflows with similar non sequiturs. Musically, K runs through an amazing array of influences, from the Buffalo Springfield ("Knight on the Town") to Hindu mysticism ("Govinda") to Bowie ("Magic Theatre"). "Into the Deep" lifts its chorus whole cloth from the Blues Image's gem, "Ride, Captain, Ride." Mills' popcraft is astonishingly skillful and exceptionally well recorded. A great debut, and a fun disc.

Echobelly, On (550 Music/Epic): Echobelly relies heavily on Blondie' s and Bow Wow Wow's power chording guitars and relentlessly driving beats. Sonya Madan and Glenn Johansson's songs are skillfully crafted, each disguising a knife-edge reality behind a simple pop melody. Like Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albam, Madan is preoccupied with England's fortress-like class structure and the failure of institutional socialism to bring it down. On sizzles with piquant dollops of social commentary-not terribly artful, mind you, but heartfelt and real. A middle class gent "... deans his car once a week/he keeps an eye out for resistable bargains/but every night in his sleep/he dreams of sex on the street/he longs for pantyhose and roses." In "Natural Animal" she purrs "In and out of trouble/ Pushed in a school full of fools/I'm a natural animal/Bent by the rules." In "King of the Kerb" she nods to street life: "Same boys doing it for themselves/There's somebody out there doing it for you/Safe while you're paying out for your health/They're the kings of the kerb/And everybody knows what they're worth." On is first rate rock and bleeding good pop. And Echobelly is a band to watch.

The La's (Go!/London): The La's, a Liver-pudlian contraction for "lads" -- very hip lads, never finished their eponymous debut album. According to one-time bassist John Power, the band's leader and chief songwriter, Lee Mavers, was such a compulsive perfectionist in the studio that none of the songs was ever approved for release. The band disbanded, and the tiny Go! label released The La's without songwriting credits, lyrics, or even the names of the band members.

The La's on the disc were Power, Mavers, and brothers Peter and Neil Cammell on bass and drums. Produced by heavyweight Steve Lillywhite, The La's is that rare, timeless masterpiece in which each song has an irresistible hook, a hummable melody, disarming lyrics, and the vocal charm of a grade school choir. From the hit single "There She Goes" to the exquisite "Timeless Melody/' gleeful threads of the Fab Four, Faces, and the Kinks dance amid The La's keen popcraft. This is an amazing disc, whose appeal will outlast its time.

Cast, All Change (Polydor): Out of the cacophonous crescendo which closed The La's, Lee Mavers sang, "The change is cast." And out of The La's emerged Cast, with a beefy, mature sound, the same bassist (John Power), and a disc that at once reinforces and shatters one's presumptions about the historicity of Britpop. All Change has enough embedded history lessons to humble all of the other bands in this column combined, but, like the eternal phoenix, bursts from the ashes of The La's with blazing guitars, original songs, and pristine arrangements. In short, pop heaven.

The songs echo with Mitch Easter's guitars from Let's Active's Cypress, Mike Mills and Peter Buck's early, jangly R.E.M. arrangements, and the Fab Four's triad harmonies. "Two of a Kind" even bows in Damon Albarn's direction. Lyrically, Power focuses on Cast's own survival ("Alright"), the state of the planet ("Promised Land", "Mankind"), and the art of growing up ("Finetime"). This disc also has one of those rare pop gems, the nearly perfect song, that makes All Change a must buy. "Four Walls" will stand with E's "A Most Unpleasant Man," Elton John's "Daniel" and blur's "Badhead" as paragons of pop excellence.

blur (Virgin): Blur's fifth disc starts with the fuzzy guitar vamp from The Cars' "Let the Good Times Roll" and descends into "Beetlebaum," a song at home on any Fab Four album from Sgt. Pepper's to Abbey Road. It is followed by a Nirvana done ("Song 2"), an outtake from Exile on Main Street ("Country Sad Ballad Man"), and finally a Damon Albam/blur song, "M.O.R." After a string of pop masterpieces, culminating with 1994's Parklife and last year's The Great Escape, Albarn has opted for a minimalist hodgepodge which wanders across the musical map. blur leans heavily on the '90s penchant for dirty guitars and thrashing beats and less on the melodic, song-driven craft of its forebears. While this may cause some head-scratching, there's no doubting Albarn's commercial antennae: blur has outcharted all its predecessors, and "Song 2" is an altrock smash. And I admit that after many, many listenings, it's kinds grown on me.

Boo Radleys, C'mon Kids (Mercury): After the buoyant exhilaration of Wake Up!, Martin Carr's third disc gloms on to Billy Corgan for its sound if not its lyrical content. Spacey post-Revolver atmospherics punctuate knife hot guitars, intensely introspective lyrics, and a wall-of-noise sound that, for all of its bombast, attempts to marry '60s stylistics with '90s sensibilities. Like blur, C'Mon Kids tries to emancipate Britpop from the British, embracing a commercially American sensibility. But its subjects are all too Brit: Liverpool ("New Brighton Promenade"), William Blake ("Everything is Sorrow"), and English history ("Four Saints"). Nonetheless, C'Mon Kids is another, if tenuous, step forward for The Boos. This album doesn't soar -- it sears. Carr's troops may not be the next Beatles, but they may stake a claim to being the next Smashing Pumpkins.

Supergrass, In It for the Money (Capitol): It's a tribute to blur's domination of Britpop over the last five years that Supergrass's Gaz Coombes owes as much to Damon Albam as Lennon and McCartney. On their second disc Supergrass steps into the pure pop breach left by blur and The Boo Radleys as the latter chase American sales. The title tune leads with a phalanx of ringing, chiming guitars, segues into sublime three-part harmonies, and ends with a brassy fanfare. "Tonight" races at blitzkrieg speed grinding blur through Meatloaf and Cheap Trick -- Coombes could match cuts with Rick Nielson any night. "Late in the Day" slows the pace down with a deceptively simple melody and a turn around chorus straight out of Supertramp. "G-Song" pays overt obeisance to the Fab Four, although Coombes' guitar refers more to Dave Davies. Bassist Mick Quinn and drummer Danny Coffey add magnificent support to Coombes penchant for complexity and speed. Coffey's rock steady backbeat holds everything together -- witness the percussion rave-up that closes "Sun Hits the Sky." Supergrass is a remarkable band that has put out a remarkable pop album, one that rivals The Rembrandts or Parklife.

The London Suede, Coming Up (Nude/Columbia): The ever prescient British rock press quickly announced London Suede's doom when ace guitarist Bernard Butler split following the enigmatic and glorious Dog Man Star. Suede's Brett Anderson and Matt Osman, who'd also survived the earlier departure of Justine Frischmann, have responded with Coming Up, a paean to psychedelia and glam rock that must have Saints Freddy Mercury and Mark Bolan smiling down with pride. Coming Up opens appropriately enough with "Trash," a driving rocker right out of the Psychedelic Furs with the sad chorus "We're the litter on the breeze/We're lovers on the streets/Just trash, me and you/It's in everything we do." That pretty much sets the lyric tone of the disc: Glamorous, outrageous, hedonistic, booze swilling, pain killing love of life -- and maybe, just maybe, a tragic death. All the young dudes and dudettes, eh?

Despite the ambience of an appetite depressant, Coming Up is musically rich, lovingly poignant, belying the utter bummer that seems to be the drug infused lot of the glare crowd. Guitarist Richard Oakes, drummer Simon Gilbert, and keyboardist Neil Codling translate Anderson and Osman's disturbing visions into moments of supple grandeur. And while some of the moments are overwrought, like the coda to "The Chemistry Between Us," those are few. Overall, Anderson and Osman paint a sympathetic genre scene of street glare, with its glossy sheen and transcendent elan. The London Suede haven't lost a thing. Nice disc, guys, but try to chill, okay?

Radiohead, OK Computer (Capitol): For a bunch who couldn't get arrested at a pickpocket convention, Radiohead has fared well in the past couple of years, cashing in on the resurgence of Britpop and the timeless anger teens fling at anybody and anything nonteen. After the snivelling success of "Creep" and Pablo Honey, Radiohead encored with The Bends, enlarging their musical vocabulary with synths and strings. OK Computer mixes their pitiable angst with intriguing arrangements and a perverse brand of pop poetry to produce the '90s answer to the Moody Blues. "Air Bag" sets the tone, "In the next world war/ I'm a jackknifed juggernaut/I am born again ... In an intastella burst/I am back to save the universe!" "Paranoid Android" continues, "Please could you stop the noise/I'm trying to get some rest/From all the unborn/Chikkenvoices in my head." The highlight of their intellectual curiosity is"More Productive," which characterizes an average workaday stiff: "Nothing so teenage and desperate/Nothing so childish/At a better pace/Slower and more calculated."

Nonetheless, the music is gorgeous, impeccably played, and devoid of excess -- well, most of it. And if you pay attention to lyrics, you won't be able to help conjuring visions of Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder, the Mood, s masters of bombast. But if you can ignore the lyrics, the music is sublime, as adventurous and subtle as anything out there today.

Pet Shop Boys, Bilingual (Atlantic): While PSB belongs to another generation of British pop, their return after a lengthy hiatus, 1993's Very, warrants ecstatic mention. Yes!

Spice Girls, Spice (Virgin Records America): is the perfect album for anyone who believes that The Archies or the Village People are high art. If you really, really want girls who sing nothing but uncontested melody, get Bananarama's The Greatest Hits Collection (London). If you want a great female vocal group try The Mint Juleps (Hightone). Hey, sex sells.

The List: The half dozen or so regular readers of this column will recognize Compass Records and the likes of Kaila Flexer and Third Ear, Judith Edelman, Todd Phillips, and Clive Gregson. Compass's recent quality offerings:

Victor Wooten, What Did He Say? Women enlists some fine sidemen -- mostly his brothers -- for this extraordinary sequel to last year's Show of hands.

Colin Linden, Through the Storm Through the Night. Linden is billed as, er, a Canadian blue,man. Uh, not. But this disc is chock full of hard road tunes which owe as much to Steve Earle and Robbie Robertson as to the Fairfield Four.

Julian Dawson, Move Over Darling. Dawson shares songwriting credits with heavies like Dan Penn, Rosie Flores, and Clive Gregson. Penn, Richard Thompson, and the Roches play and sing. And the disc is utterly irresistible.

Boo Hewerdine and Darden Smith, Evidence. Compass has reissued this classic, mostly acoustic gem from the dawn of altrock. "All I Want (Is Everything)" resides on my desert island song list.

Pierce Pettis, Making Light of It. A Windham Hill/High Street vet, Pettis's gentle gospel-cum-folk reminds one of Peter Himmelman's loping cadences.

Kate Campbell, Moonpie Dreams. No, you won't need an RC Cola to wash down Campbell's poignant vignettes of life amid the live oaks and Spanish moss. But it'd sure be yummy -- just like this disc.

It's a bloody cockup, wot, luv? E-mail: WonderLzrd@aol.com.Cheery ho! -- KE