On their debut album, the Work sounded a bit like what Henry Cow might have sounded like if that band had been part of the Crass posse. Rubber Cage, originally issued in 1989 after a seven-year layoff, finds the Work sounding more like a cross between Pere Ubu and Massacre (the Fred Frith power trio, not the heavy metal band) — note in particular the brief and spiky blast of “Poise” and the fractured funk of “Jay,” and the way that the random single-string guitar licks on “Abdomen” function in much the same manner as Allen Ravenstine’s EML synthesizer did on those early Pere Ubu recordings. But Tim Hodgkinson’s vocals have come a long way since 1982, and so has the band’s musical conception: tracks like “Poise” and the swinging, acoustic-based “Knee” are frustrating only because of their brevity, and the cool and slithery skronk of “Great Climax” is both eerily weird and strangely accessible. Although Hodgkinson is a measurably better singer at this point, it’s still the instrumental sections that work best here — the latter half of “Dangerfish,” the opening two minutes and final four minutes of “1992,” and that cheerily funky “Jay,” with its 5/4 rhythmic foundation and jaunty guitar. Nice. – Rick Anderson