CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

DEPARTMENTS

by Robert Christgau

ARTHUR BLYTHE: “Lenox Avenue Breakdown” (Columbia)::I prefer this to, say, Blythe’s more conventionally “free” Bush Baby (on Adelphi) because—thanks to Jack DeJohnette, Guillermo Franco, and the lilt of Blythe’s theme vamps—its passion for popular rhythms enables it to say something about them. The sinuous Latin groove of “Down San Diego Way” wends through three of the four tracks. But while the California opener is unfailingly sunny, the groove runs into two-\X/ay traffic on the title tune and suffers further cross-comment on the bluesy “Slidin’ Through” before disappearing on “Odessa.” Just as Steely Dan’s lyrics (and chord changesr 1 suppose) work against the surface mellowness of the music, so the strength of the groove here is challenged and transformed by solo voices and alien rhythms without ever being defeated, much less exploited for its “accessibility.” And if we’re interested, all this conflict helps us understand why music like Bush Baby exists.

A

DAVID BOWIE: “Lodger” (RCA Vic tor)::I used to think Bowie was middlebrow, but now I’d prefer to call him postmiddlebrow—an habitue' of prematurely abandoned modernist space. Musically, these fragments of anomie don’t seem felt, and lyrically they don’t seem' thought through. But that’s part of their charm— the way they confound categories of sensibility and sophistication is so frustrating it’s satisfying, at least if you Have your doubts about the categories. Less satisfying is one’s frustration with several of the songs themselves. But one must acknowledge that Eno’s lessons seem finally to have been absorbed.

A-

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS: “Minute by Minute” (Warner Bros.)::Tight playing combines with moderately intricate rhythms and harmonies for sexy, dancey pop music of undeniable craft (at least on side one). And as we all know, they could be doing a lot worse.

B-

EARTH, WIND & FIRE: “I Am” (ARC/Columbia)::Tigh'F*playing combines with Jiigh-tension rhythms and harmonies for sexy, dancey pop music of undeniable craft (without letup). But as we all know, they could be doing a lot better.-

B

DAVE EDMUNDS: “Repeat When Necessary” (Swan Song)::This sounds like a Rockpile album while Nick Lowe’s doesn’t because Lowe loves rock ’n’ roll for everything it implies as culture while Edmunds loves it for everything it is as music. There is a richtiess of reference here that leaves Edmunds’s rockabilly phase far behind—five of the songs are imaginative genre pieces from two pubberies that appear to specialize in pubrock revivalism, new ones by Parker and Costello add that contemporary touch, and the zesty remake of “Home in My Hand” cuts Brinsley Schwarz’s. But what defines the music is Edmunds’s willingness to defer to the overdrive of the two other guys in the band, unsung guitarist Billy Bremner and pitiless drummer Terry Williams. In unity there is power.

A-

THE GIBSON BROTHERS: “Cuba” (Island)::Though brother Chris’s vocals get wearing—his hoarse shout sounds like the version of male soul the entire Eurodisco network tries to simulate—the title track is still a killer and the rest of the side hangs tough. As does “Better Do It Salsa!” leading off side two. And then...

B+

ARLO GUTHRIE: “Outlasting the Blues” (Warner Bros.)::These reflections on God, love, and death are substantial and obviously earned, but too ofte'n they’re just not acute. The problem isn’t his religious overview, either—think of TBone Burnett. Guthrie simply goes soft aesthetically at crucial moments, and although most of the material is creditable enough, only once—on “Epilogue,” Guthrie’s “Under Ben Bulben”—is the enormous emotional potential of the project realized.

B

KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND: “Do You Wanna Go Party” (T.K.):: You’d think after a layoff of more than two years they’d come up with something less redundant, and the slight shifts in rhythmic and compositional strategy are dubious. But this band is like the Ramones—the hooks sneak up on you every time. What can I say? Not only do I love the title cut, but I find myself humming everything else on the record—the slow one, the cover version, the one in Spanish.

B+

„ “JERRY LEE LEWIS” (Elektra)::In % which Bones Howe and some crack studio 5 pros (Hal Blaine, Charlie Burton) spend | four days getting a hot album out of the | Killer, his first since the 1973 London i sessions (and more consistent, too). Think of it as autumnal rock /’n’ roll—undiminished tempos under fadeaway phrasing. ^Best tune: “Rita Mae,” the simple rock ’n’ roll ditty he’s always Wanted to write.

B+

NICK LOWE: “Labour of Lust” (Col umbia)::The title is more than a (great) joke—this album is consciously carnal, replete with girls who come in doses, tits that won’t quit, lumps in the pocket, and x extensions that aren’t Alexander Bell’s, invention. With Rockpile backing, it’s also more straight-ahead than Pure Pop. This is nice—my favourite line is “I don’t think it’s funny no more”—but it does nothing to stop Lowe from falling into clichds like “Without Love,” which ought to be funny and isn’t. But then again on the other hand that’s probably the point.

A

JAY McSHANN: “The Big Apple Bash” (Atlantic)::Those who want blues from 12th Street, and Vine will enjoy McShann’s album with T-Bone Walker (on Classic Jazz). This is something else— Kansas City jazz rendered by an instrumental ensemble that never gets bigger than the mid-70’s Rolling Stones. And although I’m no aficionado of the horn chart, I enjoy the interplay of instrumental colors on standards by Waller, Basie, Ellington, and McShann.

B+

“PLATINUM HOOK” (Motown>::Taken as I am with the nominal ingenuity of such. pomp-rock tyros as Trillion and Tycoon, this disco concoction wins first prize in the latest name-that-band sweepstakes. Talk about your money and your„mouth. But in the future perhaps an even more direct approach is indicated. Possibilities: Rack Jobber, Airplay, AOR, A&R, Executive Vice-President "for Promotion and Marketing.

" D+

THE RESIDENTS: “Duck Stab/Buster & Glen”(Ralph)::Much to my annoyance, I not only find myself nyaahing along to these weird, misanthropic, exuberantly absurdist post-art-rock fragments, I find myself giggling. Just the thing to divert precocious but obnoxious 10-year-olds— the kind of thing Frank Zappa might be doing if he hadn’t left his brains at the bank in 1971.

A-

CARLY SIMQN: “Spy” (Elektra)::This advocate of the fuck-around-and-fibabout-it school of post-monogamy (“Morality is what I can do andstill live with myself,” she revealed to her publicist recently) dedicates her latest to Anais Nin, and for once I think she’s selling herself short—at her best she’s sharper than Anais Nin. If she’d been able to maintain the shrewd, ironic, vengeful-to-loving-tobemused pace of the first three songs, she might actually have made a case for her ethical theories. But after that she mostly seems confused. Anais would be proud.

B-

SQUEEZE: “Cool for Cats” (A&M):: Power poppers (remember them?) suck this stuff up, and I understand why—not only does its songcraft surpass that of the band’s debut, but it also isn’t quite as sophomoric. It’s sophomoric enough, though, and like so many such records makes you wonder where the power is. Not in the vision, that’s for sure. And not in the beat. Great song: “Up the Junction.”

B

RACHEL SWEET: “Fool Around” (ARC/Columbia)::Two cofnpositions by (ousted?) svengali Liam Sternberg have been replaced on the U.S. release by, straightforward rockers, which makes sense. Like Tanya Tucker, Sweet thrives on simple material, and while Sternberg’s songs are catchy and thoughtful, their fussy, uncolloquial moments don’t suit Sweet’s hot-teen persona: 'Deborah Harry might sound charmingly klutzy on the rhythmically overwrought “Cuckoo Clock” or “Suspended Animation” (“I could wait for any duration”), but Sweet just sounds like she’s following instructions. Unfortunately, both these songs were left on the LP,while natural Sweet stuff like “Just My Style” and “Truckstop Queen” (omStiff’s Akron anthology) were omitted.* This doesn’t make sense.

B+

WAR: “The Music Band” (MCA)::Fond as I might become of “Corns and Callouses” (“Hey Dr. Scholls/Won’t you . help me fix my soul”), I think fading groove bands are ill-advised to spend most of an album singing about the joys of career. Better to brighten the groove, so the career can continue.

C

TAMMY WYNETTE: “Just Tammy” (Epic)::This is schlock with conviction, the essential country music paradox. But what makes a great country album for urban speedsters like me is lyrics that are worth listening to, maybe even thinking about, and those begin and end with the opening cut, “They Call It Making Love.”

B-

NEIL YOUNG: “Rust Never Sleeps” (Reprise)::For the decade’s greatest rock ’n’ roller to come out with his greatest album in 1979 is no miracle in itself—the Stones made Exile as grizzled veterans. The miracle is that Young doesn’t sound much more grizzled now than he already did in 1969; he’s wiser but not wearier, victor so far over the slow burnout his title warns of. The album’s music, like its aura of space-age primitivism, seems familiar, but while the melodies work because ^ they’re as simple and fresh as his melodies have always been, the offhand complexity of the lyrics is unprecedented in Young’s work: “Pocohantas” makes “Cortex the Killer” seem like a tract, “Sedan Delivery”* turns “Tonight’s the Night” on its,head, and the Johnny Rotten tribute apotheosizes rock-’n’-roll-is-here-to-stay. Inspirational Verse: “Welfare mothers make better lovers.”

A+

FRANK ZAPPA: “Sheik Yerbouti” (Zappa)::If this be social “satire,” how come its sole targets are ordinary citizens whose weirdnesses happeh to diverge from those of the anal compulsive at the control board. Or are we to read his new fixation on buggery as an indication of approval? Makes you wonder whether his primo guitar solo on “Ya’ Mama” and those as-unique-as-they-used-to-be rhythms and textures are as arid spiritually as he is. As if there were any question after all these years. C

Reprint courtesy Village Voice