CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
TERRY ALLEN & THE PANHANDLE MYSTERY BAND: “Smokin The Dummy” (Fate):: Juarez, this sculptor-painter cum singer/ songwriter’s 1975 debut, was pretentiously half-assed mock mythopoeia; Lubbock (On Everything), his 1979 double was genuwine laugh-a-minute highbrow-lowbrow.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
TERRY ALLEN & THE PANHANDLE MYSTERY BAND: “Smokin The Dummy” (Fate):: Juarez, this sculptor-painter cum singer/ songwriter’s 1975 debut, was pretentiously half-assed mock mythopoeia; Lubbock (On Everything), his 1979 double was genuwine laugh-a-minute highbrow-lowbrow. This time Allen’s satire is a little thinner, and he undercuts his more sincere songs by playing them for comedy, the only vocal trick he knows. “Texas Tears,” “The Night Cafe” and “Redbird”-plus some funny ones— are recommended to sideman Joe Ely, whose band has always mystified the panhandle. B
JOHN ANDERSON: “2” (Warner Bros.):: In the right’s first flush of power, as Nashville nostalgia merges revoltingly with El Lay schlock, Anderson’s modest regard for the verities becomes not just a virtue but a treasure. Unlike, let us say, Eddie Rabbitt, he knows the difference between traditionalism and conformism, sentiment and bathos, makin’ love and makin’ out, fiddles and strings; he has the guts to attack “the power of the almighty dollar.” This is shorter on go-rillas than his debut, but it’s devoid of clinkers, and unless Merle Haggard gets lucky we’re not likely to hear a more honest or tuneful country album in 1981. A-