CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

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DAVID BEHRMAN: "On The Other Ocean / Figure In A Clearing" (Lovely):: On Discreet Music and the Fripp collaborations, Eno taught me to appreciate this kind of semiimprovised, semi-electric, semi-minimal trance and/or background music, but I think Behrman, a Soho/California composer who uses computers for chance input and builds his own synthesizers, does it better. Certainly his textures are more interesting, without any hint of unseemly lushness —or of Glass-type climaxes, for that matter. Steady as she goes. (Address: 463 West Street, NYC 10014.) ARODNEY CROWELL: "Ain't Living Long Like This" (Warner Bros.):: He's smart, he's soulful, he's got that tragic sense of life—yes, folks, Gram Parsons lives on in spirit, right down to Emmylou on harmony. If only the tempos were a little snappier, there might be more than four songs on side two, and chances are that the extra would be as good as the rest. From "California Earthquake": "You're a partner of the devil and we ain't afraid of him/We'll build ourselves another town so you can tear it down again." Talk about inspirational verse. A-

DETROrr JR.: "Chicago Urban Blues" (Antilles):: Jr. languished in a byway of my shelves for over a year, which is the way it is with laid-back piano blues—hard to tell one record from another without trying. This broke through—insinuating, witty midnight music with loving respect for the verities, a flawless exposition of the conventions of the form. B +

"GREASE" (RSO):: The Sha Na Na cuts document the group's deterioration from an affectionate, phonographically ineffective bunch of copycats into a repellent Vegas oldies act. The Casey-Jacobs stage songs are entertaining and condescending takeoffs on 50's readymades, a little too good for Manhattan Transfer. And the updates provided by the Stigwood combine, Valli's "Grease" (written by Barry Gibb) and Travolta and Newton-

John's "You're The One That I Want," are two of 1978's better singles. That's probably how they should be bought, too, but this is far from a disgrace. C + LYNYRD SKYNYRD: "Slcynyrd's First And... Last" (MCA):: I'm glad to own this album, cut at Muscle Shoals in the pre-MCA days and overdubbed for possible release before the plane crash ended their career. I'm impressed by both the packaging (44 photos, many terrific) and John Swenson's notes (extensive, acute), and I like the music fine. But I don't think this is where I'll go to hear Skynyrd. Even if I wanted to disregard the two songpoems by long-departed drummervocalist Ricky Medlocke and the less than essential alternate version of "Things Goin' On," I expect more from Skynyrd than good white funk and second-rate message songs. And Swenson to the contrary, "Was I Right Or Wrong" ain't it. B

"METRO" (Sire):: Chansons d'amour es-quinte—tjres chic, trds sophistique, and plut&t ennuyeux. Un Alpha Band Europeen avec sexe, peut-etre, ou un Roxy Music pour le cabaret. A propos en Anglais, et tant pis. C +

WILLIE NELSON: "Face Of A Fighter" (Lone Star):: It's been five years since Nelson put together an album of the mournful country love songs that earned him an outlaw's independence, and even that was a concept job, Phases And Stages. This is just 10 slow ones—maybe six special, no clinkers—and the music is wonderful. Nelson's voice has never come on more fragile or deliberate—you can almost hear hinii figuring out exactly what commonplace he's going to illuminate next—and his band sounds equally sure-footed. Rarely is there a g lick you haven't heard somewhere S before, but the lick always seems just a g leetle different, which may be because | it's so exquisitely timed and may be because it's just a leetle different. A-

THE O'JAYS: "So Full Of Love" (Philadelphia International):: If the title's true—I've never considered Eddie Levert one of the great romantics— it's damn sure not all they're full of. Exception: Bunny Sigler's "Strokety Stroke." C +

PABLO CRUISE: "Worlds Away" (A&M):: This group hit my enemies list somewhere on Interstate 95. Hook glut, it's called—hear David Jenkins sing "once you get past the pain" 50 times in a day and the pain will be permanent. This guy is a one-man ' Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, and to hell with his sense of rhythm. Even if the next hit is the title cut, a genuine rocker, the band is the 70's Grass Roots, and if Orleans and the Doobie Brothers are the obvious forerunners, that's their cross to bear. It don't mean a thing if it's studio swing. C

TEDDY PENDERGRASS: "Life Is A Song Worth Singingf (Philadelphia International):: Okay, I'm convinced. I still find his stuff with the Blue Notes inconsistent—forced, cluttered, unfocused—and his solo debut still sounds like a quickie. But this is a formidable album; romantic schlock at its sexiest and most honest..Pendergrass is in such control of his instrument thatthe more commonplace of the Sigma Sound orchestrations never spoil the mood, while the good ones— let's hear it for the sax break on "Only You"—accent it the way they're supposed to. The key is that he's not belting much—except for one dull party number, everything is mediumtempo or slower. Pendergrass has a tendency to bluster when he belts, to come on too strong. The slow stuff— these aural seductions are hardly "ballads"—plays lip his vulnerability and gives his vocal textures room to breathe. , A-

WILSON PICKETT: "A Funky Situation'* (Big Tree):: This is Wicked's disco move, and though I don't think it'll go over at the Loft, I do think it's his best album of the 70's, "Changed my clothes, but I didn't change my soul," he assures us, and that's it exactly. The production (by Rick Hall and Don Daily) and especially the horn arrangements (by Harrison Calloway, Jr.) are dense and eventful rather than overblown and crowded, the way so much of Pickett's later music was, and unlike so much disco they're designed only to boot ass, never to engulf and wash over. What's more, Pickett is singing again—rarely does he resort to the random scream. His own "Lay Me Like You Hate Me" is a startling distillation of what he's always really been about, and though most of the Other songs are just ordinary-plus, they've been chosen with obvious care—no song-factory seconds here.

i b+

PLASTIC BERTRAND: "Ca Plane Pour Moi" (Sire);: French rock 'n' roll is French rock 'n' roll—good for a novelty, maybe, but that's it. Anyway, I can't understand the words. C

THE SAINTS: "Eternally Yours? (Sire):: "Private Affair" is the perfect punk-cum-early-Kinks song,; "International Robots" invents a. Jonathan Richman clone, and Chris Bailey should dub in the vocals on Seymour Stein's "Wild In The Streets" remake. But the lyrics are received protest, the tempos have slackened, and if those horns are somebody's notion of a joke, I am not amused. The very idea. C + "LEOSAYER" (Warner Bros.):: The little fella covers "La Booga Rooga," which means admirers of Andy Fairweather-Low should be pleased. We'd be even more pleased if Leo didn't do the same favor four times over for admirers of Tom Snow. C +

"THE SHIRTS" (Capitol):: Driving through the Bronx on my way from South Carolina to Maine this August, I heard "Lovely Android" on the radio and wondered for a moment if the Ramones were making an art-rock move. This gaffe was probably a symptom of homesickness, but it does indicate that on record, where Annie Golden's Broadway proclivities are invisible, this becomes a vaguely interesting (or at least eccentric) band—

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Focus gone CBGB's without chops, kind of. C +

NINA SIMONE: "Baltimore" (CTI):: Carried along on David Matthews's uncharacteristically infectious arrangement, Simone's version of one of Randy Newman's more perfunctory American-names songs is a glorious fluke on the order of Baez's "Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." I'm glad, though, that it's available as a single, because unlike owner-annotator Creed Taylor I don't find that Simone's "magnificent intensity . . . turns

everything—even the most simple, mundane phrase or lyric—into a radiant, poetic message." On the contrary, her penchant for the mundane renders her intensity as bogus as her mannered melismas and pronunciation (move over, Inspector Clouseau) and the rote flatting of her vocal improvisations. There are several good cuts here; the song selection is often inspired (HurleyWilkins's "The Family," perfect). But a woman who not only avoids uttering the "bitch" in "Rich Girl" but hobbles the rhythm as well has obviously got real problems. B-

GARY STEWART: "Little Junior" (RCA Victor):: This is a likable album because Stewart is a likable artist, secure by now in his good-humored bad-old-boy persona. But only once— on a version of Ry Cooder's "I Got Mine" that ranks with the greatest Jerry Reed novelties—does he give that persona a shot in the arm. This isn't uptight, like his sophomore-jinx effort, Steppin' Out. But it doesn't kick as consistently as last year's Your Place Or Mine, either. B

KOKO TAYLOR: "The Earthshaker" (Alligator):: Taylor's voice has deepened and roughened so much, that her 1971 debut on Chess, which at the time seemed to epitomize the kind of music made by people with Big in front of their names, sounds girlish by comparison. She has no gift for the slow ones, always a crippling flaw in Chicago blues, and two or three cuts here really drag. But the uptempo stuff is exemplary—most of the songs are fun as songs, and the guitar on "Wang Dang Doodle" is a killer. (Available from Disconnection, Box 563, NYC 10003.) B +

O. V. WRIGHT: The Bottom Line" (Hi):: With its unabashedly country (i.e., rural) singer and its backto-basics Willie Mitchell production, this one has soul nostalgiacs hot and bothered, but I find the material thin and like it mostly for its oddities: the tribute to Guy Lombardo; the sexy mama who refuses to go, as opposed to get, down by declaring, "I don't do windows" (what???); and the old man who defines love as "a misunderstanding'between two damn fools. " B TAMMY WYNETTE: "Womanhood" (Epic):: In which Billy Sherrill performs (or permits) a miracle: five good songs on one side. (Nobody ever accused Billy of thinking big.) On side one, we learn about virtue soretempted, the limits of sisterhood, music as emotional communion, virtue abandoned, and the limits of professionalism. On side two, Tammy confuses Wolfman Jack with John the Baptist and then retreats into the commonplace. With country albums, you take what you can get. B

Reprint courtesy of the Village Voice.