Third Eye Blind Is No Fluke: Second CD proves S.F. band's got it

Just as the Jefferson Airplane once represented the city's libertine views and the Tubes later stood for its flaky excess, Stephan Jenkins and his band are the new Bay Area: They're stylized powermongers, with one eye on ticker tape and the other on the mirror. And its third one, if it's blind at all, its blind only to the band's detractors.

They're sharp. Very. Check the they . It's Jenkins' show, of course. The musicians - guitarist Kevin Cadogan, bassist Arion Salazar, drummer Brad Hargreaves - are the help. Excellent help, but still just the help.

Some performers have so much energy its exhausting just trying to deny them. Jenkins is definitely one of those.

"Friends say I've changed. I don't listen," he sings on "Deep Inside of You". It's the new album's "Hows It Going To Be", the stately ballad. It's a relationship song, but it might as well be Jenkins confessing he's a ruthless businessman.

He may not be super-talented, but he has a certain je ne sais quoi that has sadly become a rarity in rock'n'roll. Jim Morrison took his to Paris. He didn't seem like a very nice guy, either.

Assume for a moment there are some rock fans out there who couldn't identify Jenkin's voice - that curious, faux-Brit, fly-guy instrument. This band isn't just making generic alt-rock music, not matter how often the cafe cognoscenti insists it is.

It's innovating. There's a children's choir, appropriately enough, on a swirling "is she or isn't she" tune called "10 Days Late". And the intriguing "Darwin" is a new kind of astro pop, not just the gimmicky retrofuturism of certain other Bay Area hitmakers of late.

The band is also aiming high with its peers. On "The Red Summer Sun", Jenkins' shrieking, doubletime vocal ("been a long time...") is unmistakable.

It's a punk pummeling of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll". And the first single, the two-minute punk-metal furnace "Anything", borrow a soaring effect from U2's the Edge, Third Eye Blind onetime touring host during that giddy moment when the debut album when rocketing.

The frightening thing is, half this new record will be on the radio in a matter of monthes. And to think the band barely made its deadline, turning in the record just a month ago.

Jenkins is a crafty so-and-so. As with "Semi-Charmed-Life", the band is courting controversy, this time over the song "Slow Motion", a commentary on violence that was briefly objected to by Elektra's parent company, Time Warner, whose chairman's son was recently shot to death.

Other ghosts lurk, too. On "Camouflage," Jenkins is apparently offering a camouflaged tribute to the late Jeff Buckley with his wordless, upper-register keening. Buckley tributes are trendy - fellow handsome devils Chris Cornell and Ducan Sheik have made them. If it's in, count Jenkins in.

Toward the end of the record, the singer lets down his guard, uncharacteristically. "I want someone to know me/Maybe tell me who I am," he sings ruefully on "Darkness", and you almost feel sorry for him.

Almost. "And the strong survive," he sizzles on the next track, "Darwin". "Yeah, the strong survive." They certainly do.