What songs! What hair(line)! What shoes! Look Sharp! sounded as striking as its cover photo looked, and Joe Jackson was anointed a member — alongside Graham Parker and Elvis Costello — of England's angry young troubadours club. (It took a while to recognize how completely dissimilar the three were at the time.) Although he wasn't so disgusted (more like archly amused), Jackson was the first of the three to really sell records in America, largely due to the hit singledom of the wry "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" Jackson's songs mixed cheek, edge and a self-deprecating wit that set him apart from his more serious peers. Maybe all the lyrics don't sound as clever now as they seemed back then, but stuff like "Happy Loving Couples" and "Pretty Girls" took the pulse of post-adolescent heebie-jeebies, and kicked a little butt, too.

Much of the material on I'm the Man dates from/is an extension of Look Sharp!, though several songs up the bile quotient, notably "On Your Radio" and "Don't Wanna Be Like That." The revved-up lyrics are balanced by catchy high-speed pop-rock (as on the title tune and "Get That Girl") and that affecting approximation of genius, "It's Different for Girls." The LP may lack the crispness and consistent impact of its predecessor, but it's a strong and enduring platter.

That Jackson was seeking an alternative to the fast-paced rock'n'roll of his first two albums was signaled by The Harder They Come EP (a straight reggae reading of the Jimmy Cliff song, plus two Jackson originals) and then trumpeted in no uncertain terms by Beat Crazy, the final LP with his original tight-knit band. Jackson put it bluntly in the liner notes: "This album represents a desperate attempt to make some sense of Rock and Roll. Deep in our hearts, we knew it was doomed to failure. The question remains: Why did we try?" The attempt seems less desperate than just plain confused, and its failure makes the LP the least satisfying of his initial salvo.

Joe then took a musical journey through the past, recording Jumpin' Jive in tribute to the great Louis Jordan: cool jazz vocals over mock big-band swing. Obviously enjoying himself (for once), Jackson romps his way through "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" and related gems from the Louis Jordan/Cab Calloway school of hepness. Jackson's production is warm and loving; though clearly a respite from the official progress of his music, Jumpin' Jive is enormous fun and has held up over time.

Night and Day proved to be Jackson's most successful outing since Look Sharp!, although the urban/Latin flavor bears not the slightest resemblance to the white-hot sound of his early days. The Latin rhythms seem less him than the buoyant bop of Jumpin' Jive, yet Jackson is obviously sincere. The Real Men EP is "Real Man" from Night and Day plus three more from the LP with vocals in Spanish.

Jackson's next departure — an intended film soundtrack — became something of an embarrassment. Months after the Mike's Murder album (billed as music from the film) appeared, the James Bridges picture still hadn't, and rumors circulated over which problems were causing the delay; while the decision not to use Jackson's music was one of them, that could hardly have been the prime problem. Regardless, it's Jackson at his least assured, and the most notable item is "Memphis," whose organ line and rhythm are lifted straight from the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'."

Jackson survived that debacle to make Body and Soul, an ambitious attempt to simplify and repersonalize the recording process as much as possible. With a distant, light sound — quite in contrast to the stuffy closeness of most contemporary records — and '50s jazz stylings tinged by an ongoing affection for Latin music, the record has plenty of atmosphere, and contains some of his strongest, most mature songwriting. Unlike his previous time-tunnel trip, Body and Soul eschews period re-creation (except on the cover) in favor of a wistful ambience indicative of Jackson's distaste for much modern music.

The three-sided Big World was recorded live directly to a digital stereo master with a small band at a three-day New York concert engagement staged especially for that purpose in January 1986. With no post-production tinkering of any sort, the fifteen new songs — some about current world political affairs, others about societal issues — are reproduced on two discs as accurately as possible. Stylistically, Big World is a return to stripped-down, lightly seasoned jazzy rock. A little self-important (the rampantly multi-lingual booklet smacks of grandstanding) and creatively inconsistent, but an impressively ambitious effort.

Redolent with unrestrained pomposity, the ironically titled Will Power is an instrumental album that mixes Jackson's least interesting film-score composition style with the "overture for two pianos" which turned into the title track. The type-free cover and the inside photo of the suffering artist, sitting dejectedly alone in a huge studio, merely indicate the imagined depths of this trivial self-indulgence. While Jackson may be impressed by his ability to convince an orchestra to play his melodramatically panoramic music, it's unlikely anyone else will find this exercise especially rewarding.

The conceptually masterful 1988 live album is divided into four different creative eras; each side presents a different incarnation of the Joe Jackson Experience. Side One, recorded in Manchester and Holland in 1980, features material from the first three albums, played with his original backing trio. Side Two (1983), recorded with a keyboard-laden quintet in Sydney, Australia, is billed as "The Night and Day Tour" but contains only "Cancer" from that album. Instead, it draws further from the same three records, offering the second (this time a cappella) rendition of "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" on the LP. Side Three (1984), recorded in Sydney and Melbourne during the horn-heavy "Body and Soul Tour," again includes that song, only this time in an acoustic version; Side Four (1986) hails from Canada and Japan and features a straight electric rock quartet doing selections (including "Breaking Us in Two," "It's Different for Girls" and "Jumpin' Jive") from various albums.

Comparing Mike's Murder with Tucker shows that Jackson learned not to make the same mistake twice. Although the latter picture was a commercial flop, it was a Francis Ford Coppola flop, and at least had some artistic raison d'être. To his credit, Jackson's music is of a piece with the project's high quality: a cinematic use of '40s-style jazz, with a spot of artistic license, allowing for a few anachronistic styles and production techniques. But it's deftly crafted, credible stuff — there's even an apparent nod to Thelonious Monk — that creates its moods well.

Blaze of Glory is a concept album that's not a concept album. You can imagine him saying, "On this concept album, every song can stand on its own," a self-defeating approach that virtually defies the realization of any overriding plan. Still, the idea — a rock'n'roller of Jackson's generation followed from frustrated childhood to chastened but wistful adulthood — is not so fancy that it really needs much elucidation. Indeed, the songs can stand alone, and most are unquestionably cogent and catchy (faves include "Nineteen Forever" and "The Human Touch"). In the process, Jackson answers the Beat Crazy question: rock may no longer be his message, but it still can be a swell medium.

Ending a decade-long association with A&M Records, Jackson arrived at his new label in 1991 a confident, accomplished pop auteur ready for whatever challenges he could envision. The overwhelmed consumer indecision of "It's All Too Much" ("They say that choice is freedom / I'm so free it drives me to the brink") sets the tone on Laughter & Lust. "Only love can be stranger than fiction," he sings, expressing bewilderment in aisles outside the supermarket. Smiling through the tears, Jackson elaborates on the confounded romantic theme in "Goin' Downtown," "Drowning" and "Jamie G.," while expressing unhappy certainty in the difficulties of "When You're Not Around" and "The Other Me." Pictured on the cover in prison stripes toting a ball and chain, Jackson soft-pedals the wry adventures of an Englishman living in New York, keeping his stylistic ambitions to himself. The lyrics do the heavy lifting; backed by longtime musicians Graham Maby (bass), Sue Hadjopolous (percussion) and others, the singer/keyboardist keeps to a straight, sophisticated middle rock-pop road that is suitable but uncharacteristic after so many genre explorations. The current-events commentary of "Obvious Song" is a sore thumb, and "Hit Single" breaks the thoughtful mood with a novelty conceit, but otherwise Laughter & Lust is an affecting, reflective album. Given its threatening, self-appraising tone, Jackson's close copy of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac classic "Oh Well" fits in quite well.

Night Music returns Jackson to the realm of high concepts, although exactly what the tranquil album's concept might be — beyond an intricately futile attempt to conjure up the sound of dreams — is hard to divine between four nocturnes (played variously on piano and by string quartet) and such weirdly melodic lyrical contraptions as "Flying" and "The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy" (a duet of sorts with Clannad's Máire Brennan). "The older I get the more stupid I feel," Jackson sings. Stupidity isn't the problem here, musical selfconsciousness is. Mixing together a little Tin Pan Alley, some Gaelic folk flute, a spot of classical singing and chamber arrangements, Night Music is a torpid fever fantasy that scarcely suggests the peaceful imaginings of sleep.