THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

by

Bachman-Turner Overdrive: "Four Wheel Drive" (Mercury). Not only is this album their worst—only natural when you've already milked a formula for three pretty good records— but people seem to know it: The surefire single didn't make top 10. Watch out for flying gear teeth. C plus.

Randall Bramblett: "That Other Mile" (Polydor). A find. Transcending its well-connected professional genre, the slightly distracted passion of Bramblett's singing combines with his oblique fusion of Southern boogie, studio country-rock, and Caribbean styles to take the edge of privilege off his philosophical fatalism. Bramblett's music is too warm and funny to sound selfsatisfied. and the way he collects images around an aphoristic catchphrase is too open-ended to sound smug. Start with side two. A minus.

Kevin Coyne: "Matching Head and Feet" (Virgin). Coyne is the kind of minor artist whose faults—mainly an undeniable narrowness of emotional range that forces him to repeat effects —1 am willing to overlook in this homogenized time. Sounding like a sly, bony and clinically loony Joe Cocker (or a failed Deke Leonard), he here abandons quirky singer-songwriting for extremely unkempt rock and roll. At some level, this is probably slick, too, but 1 haven't gotten down there yet and I probably never will. B plus.

Johnny Darrell: "Water Glass Full off Whiskey" (Capricorn). The five years of obscurity since "California Stop-Over," the brave and ignored crossover album that might have introduced "Willin"" and "These Days" to rock and country audience both, seem to have made him permanently lachrymose. When he tries to sound bright, he also sounds clumsy, as if he hasn't stretched that particular muscle in quite a while. Q: Can a tear-jerker have a formal precision of its own? A: Nope, gets too soggy. C plus. %

Millie Jackson: "Still Caught Up" (Spring). Jackson's specialty—the funky truth about husbands, wives, and bthepr women—is worth this sequel. As with "Caught Up," she has her concept in control about 80 per cent of the time, and her tone has become even nastier. But since she no longer has the advantage of surprise, her stridency is beginning to seem a little forced. B plus.

"Janis Joplin" (Columbia). No hallelujahs here even in a time of rock death. The documentary soundtrack ought to be seen, not heard; the nGwly compiled early tapes are the rather tinny record of a singer who hasn't found her band. For scholars only. C plus.

Curtis Mayfield: "America Today" (Curtom). I had hoped the featureless doodling of his post-"Super Fly" albums just meant he was treading water while transferring from Viewlex to Warner Comm. Now it appears that he was seeking new standards of incoherence. D plus.

Gwen McCrae: "Rockin" Chair" (Cat). 1 was relieved to be left tepid by this LP's original release, since it was getting embarrassing to wax warm over every album out of T.K. in Miami. But the newly added title hit, almost as irresistibly Memphis-cum-disco-with-ahook as hubby's "Rock Your Bahy," transforms it into yet another 12 inched of warm wax, tough enough to make you wonder what ever happened to soul music. Time: 28:25. B.

Tom Scott and the L.A. Express: "Tom Cat" (Ode). Joni Mitchell please note: This isn't jazz, it's background music without the foreground. It doesn't swing, it doesn't rock—it hops. C minus.

Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes: "Expressions" (Flying [Dutchman). 1 enjoyed the directness of this at first—piano improvisations striding over solid multi-percussion, in t"he spirit of Smith's former leader, Gato Barbieri, without that manic harshness. Then I began to hanker for some harshness. It's not just the strings, which are at least as intelligent as, say, Alice Coltrane's, and less ubiquitous. It's also the rhythms themselves, serving a purpose so expanded and cosmic that it's not even spiritual any more, thus rendering their connection to the body irrelevant. C plus.

Sweet: "Desolation Boulevard" (Capitol). Bazooka-rock lives. In the absence of Slade (whose failure to parc ticipate on the recent LP that bears their 1 name must be considered disquieting)., « these guys play second-bill steamroller * to Kiss. B minus.

Shoji Tabuchi: "Country Music My Way" (ABC/Dot). Tabuchi is a trained concert violinist born in Daishji, Japan, who now plays fiddle for David Houston. He also sings. His first album, which would be an instant camp masterpiece in a truly pluralistic culture, is recommended to all those seeking further, insight into the musical art of Yoko Ono. D minus.

"Ron Turner" (Folkways). This folkie throwback supports the argument that it's easier to play the outlaw if you don't need roadies with pack mules to lug your amplifiers across the wide open spaces. Armed with a 12-string and a sense of humor, Turner's imagination obviously has roots in felt experience rather than production schedules, and his monotone is often pretty droll. He makes rock and roll sound even bleaker. B.

War: "Why Can't We Be Friends?" (United Artists). Except for the title hit, which sounds even better on the radio, and the seven-minute "Heartbeat," which has been done better by the Wild Magnolias, this is a lighter version of the same old pleasantenough black Muzak. C plus.

Randy Weston: "Carnival" (Arista /Freedom). A delightful discovery. Weston applies the rigorous wit of Monk to easy-rolling African polyrhythms, and they hold up—the titlefffcut suggests a time when intellect is transcended rather than blotted out, and makes Lonnie Liston Smith sound pretty sloppy. B plus. »

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Barry White: "Just Another Way to Say I Love You" (20th Century). Seeing him live in Westchester dis: pelled any doubts about whether Barry White is Good Art—but neither is Mount Rush more. The Man's commonness is as"monumental as his girth, and that's not just meant as an insult. After all, it must have taken formidable creative will to transform Reader's Digest virtues and that face and body into a potent sexual symbol. The symbol has weight on records because White manipulates recording technology with a genius reminiscent (in originality, not sound) of Mitch Miller's. And the hits sound great on the radio. B minus. David Wills: "Barrooms to Bedrooms" (Epic). Q: Can a tear-jerker* have a formal precision of its own? A: Maybe, if the singer wears blackrimmed glasses" keeps a microphone in his nose, and doesn't take his seriousness too seriously. Time: 25:53. B. Larry Jon Wilson: "New Beginnings" (Monument). A sleeper from a previously unrecorded Georgian who looks to be around 40. Capsule portrait: he named his crippled son after his father, a dirt farmer who moved to the city with misgivings, and Bertrand Russell, both of whom he "knew and loved." The record is as original as you might hope, catchy and fresh-sounding despite overlays of schlock intended to hook the country audience. I wish I could say it was promising as well, but I suspect not. The drawback to rediscovering home truths, which is definitely Wilson's calling, is that when the excitement fades—in that spiritual weariness that becomes doubly hard to avoid when success hits—the reaffirmations turn once again into platitudes. That has already begun to happen on the weak cuts here. B plus.

Wings: "Venus and Mars" (Capitol) . Superficially, whic^ counts for a lot with McCartney, this is nis most appealing solo album, clear enough in the mixing and melodic line^ to open the possibility that his whimsical juxtapositions (robots and Main Street, Rudy Vallee and Allen TousSaint} make sense on some level! But wnen he exerts his imagination on the real world he strains for the sentimental. Just as he and Linda are too shrewd to end up in an old age home, so his fans are too shrewd to earn their portrayal (in "Rock Show") as youngsters every bit as winsome as Paulie himself. Until the man and his fans accept their own shrewdness, those juxtapositions will never take on the ironic sting of truth. B. Neil Young: "Tonight's the Night" (Reprise). Like "Time Fades Away" and "On the Beach," this album extends the reclusive desperation ofYoung's first two solo albums rather than the sweetness of the next two, the ones that made him a star. Better carpentered than "Time Fades Away" and legs crankish than "On the Beach.," this is far from metal machine music— it can be listened to. But there's pain with the pleasure, as is natural. In Boulder, it reportedly gets angry phone calls whenever it's played on the radio. What better recommendation could you ask? A.