CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
LOU ANN BARTON: "Old Enough” (Asylum):: She’s got a fine little instrument, like a nubile Bonnie Bramlett—the drawl pure cracker, the pitch and rhythm deep blue. But what she’s selling it with is tractability. For Glenn Frey she poses as a flapper in the age of Deep Throat, for Jerry Wexler she sings good old songs in good old Muscle Shoals. Sincerely in both cases I’m sure, which makes things worse.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
by
Robert Christgau
LOU ANN BARTON: "Old Enough” (Asylum):: She’s got a fine little instrument, like a nubile Bonnie Bramlett—the drawl pure cracker, the pitch and rhythm deep blue. But what she’s selling it with is tractability. For Glenn Frey she poses as a flapper in the age of Deep Throat, for Jerry Wexler she sings good old songs in good old Muscle Shoals. Sincerely in both cases I’m sure, which makes things worse. C+
THE B-52’s: "Mesopotamia” (Warner Bros.):: For a while I was afraid they were going to get encrusted in their own snot, but they really are an ordinary dance band from Athens, Georgia, which turns out to be no ordinary thing, David Byrne isn’t the secret, just the secret ingredient—one more semipopulist with his own bag of tricks, like fellow ingredient Ralph Carney except his bag’s bigger. A “party” record that never invokes that pooped word, this six-cut mini list for $5.98, as good a deal as onion dip. A+