Every high school student knows how volatile certain atmospheric mixes can be. The thunderstorm that brought Saturday night's Jones Beach kickoff to an early conclusion clearly wasn't due to the contrast between Des'ree's touchy feely positivism and Seal's somber contemplations, but the evening's unrequested sound and light show provided an apt meteorological metaphor for the two economically.

No sparks flew when Seal and Des'ree appeared together in November at the Beacon Theater. Her inspirational anthem, "You Gotta Be", was not yet a massive hit, and his stilted, no-flow stage prescence didn't appreciably improve on the eloquently stated desperation of his two albums. But Saturday, it wasn't just the elements that were electric.

Des'ree's brand of move and groove funk pop idealism thrives in an open ended club environment where she can truly be herself; shoehorning her expansive personality into a half hour of twilight mooning conveyed nothing. The long versions of "You Gotta Be", "I Ain't Movin'" and three other numbers from her second album were pleasant but ineffectual.

Seal, however, thrived in the open air. He seems to have made the final leap from artful pretender to compelling performer. Working under the threat of the deluge, which finally hit three-quarters of an hour into his set (and ended it 30 minutes later when ground strikes of lightning reached the parking lot), Seal kept the stage patter to a minimum, stringing songs together with alacrity. "It's gonna be one of those nights", he joked after one bolt had dislodged a roar of anxiety from the audience, which began dispersing even before safety dictated the evening's early finish.

Playing left handed guitar on some numbers, Seal sang his sweeping melodies with sublime understatement, blunting the potential melodrama and offhandedly knitting songs into taut wires of elegant tension. While not a great or even precise natural instrument, Seal's dry, husky voice has a solemn intimacy that seeps into the small majesty of his reflective compositions.

Seal's quartet (minus the female backing singer that accompanied him in November) provided sonically balanced, richly textured and rhythmically intricate arrangements. Seal doesn't have much stylistic range as a singer, so a lot of responsibility fell to the band to modulate the mood, which it did, shifting easily from the churning agression of "I'm Alive", "Bring It On", and "The Beginning" to the gossamer delicacy of "Dreaming in Metaphors" and "Whirlpool".

By embracing both the reserve of adult sophistication and the energy of dance floor abandon, Seal is better girded against the turbulent crosswinds of the musical environment than many of his contemporaries. And the fact that his lyrics are more vague than deep leaves it to listeners to add their own subtext to songs that are defiantly elusive.

Jeannie