CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
THE BEACH BOYS: Album" (Brother/Reprise):: On The Beach Boys Love You, lyrics like those of "Solar System" may have been a little embarrassing, but basically their silliness registered as charming. "Match Point Of Our Love" ("Early in the game when you broke me/Just like a serve") and "Belles Of Paris" ("There's a chapel 'Sacre Coeur' in quaint Montmarte [sic]/In the open air the painters show their art") are just dumb, and despite a lot of fairly pleasant music and a few passable songs, so is this.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
by Robert Christgau
THE BEACH BOYS: Album" (Brother/Reprise):: On The Beach Boys Love You, lyrics like those of "Solar System" may have been a little embarrassing, but basically their silliness registered as charming. "Match Point Of Our Love" ("Early in the game when you broke me/Just like a serve") and "Belles Of Paris" ("There's a chapel 'Sacre Coeur' in quaint Montmarte [sic]/In the open air the painters show their art") are just dumb, and despite a lot of fairly pleasant music and a few passable songs, so is this.
C
TONY BIRD: "Tony Bird Off Paradise" (Columbia):: Bird hasn't put his strongest material on this record—his debut has more knockout songs (more losers, too), and at the Other End once this native white African performed a paranoid tribute to the C.I.A. that I'd love to hear again. But he remains such an odd and abrasive singer that he has a right to go a little commercial, and producer John Lissauer sure does know how to set off a singer-songwriter.
B+