Christgau Consumer Guide

Christgau Consumer Guide

ROBERT CHRISTGAU

PHILIP BAILEY “Chinese Wall”

(Columbia)

Pretty convoluted: great falsetto of great drummer-led black pop band seeks solo identity, turns for production aid (and duet on single) to drummer who’s led great (i.e., best-selling) white art-rock band back into money by ripping off (appropriating?) black rhythms and vocals. Funny thing is: though Phil Collins plays a little louder than Maurice White, he’s got almost as many chops and may even sing better. Even at that, for Vegas-gone-toheaven I’ll take EW&F over Phil & Phil. But I’ll certainly take Phil & Phil over Genesis for lush/sensuous/zippy soundtrack. B +

BLACK STALIN “You Ask For It”

(Kalico)

Heir to the voluble wit of calypso tradition, Leroy Calliste is droller than any Jamaican Rasta you can think of whether he’s being dragged kicking and jamming into soca cliches or talking back to a vocoder that won’t shut up about “better days are coming.” With its Cuban horns and displaced steel drums, the music has its own witty take on the tradition. And if I don’t understand every topical reference, maybe it’s just as well—any kind of Rasta going on about “corruption” can get me laughing out the other side of my mouth pretty quick. Address: 1038 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226. B +

JULIE BROWN “Qoddess In Progress”

(Rhino)

Never one to turn up my nose at a cheap laugh, I’m delighted to report that like the notorious “Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun,” “I Like ’Em Big And Stupid” (“What kind of guy does a lot for me?/Superman with a lobotomy”) and “ ’Cause I'm A Blond” (“Being chosen this month’s Miss August was a compliment I’ll remember as long as I can”) go after their targets with a fine lack of discrimination. Elsewhere on the EP Julie makes love, or at least it, with a space invader (She: “That sure is a big piece of machinery you’ve got!” He: “I made it myself”) and fights a clubland hangover. Music’s catchier than a jeans jingle, too. Time: 16:34. Address: 1201 Olympic Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90404. B +

THE CHURCH “Remote Luxury”

(Warner Bros.)

I see these Aussies as the wimp Del Fuegos— musically they wind up just where they want and epistemologically they go next to nowhere. All right, so the songs are quite pretty in a modernized early-Faces/late-Zombies kind of way—more consistently so than the '60s competition (which gives them a leg up on the Fuegos, who like the macho boys they are take on the Stones). I even get the point: the sweet, melancholy alienation the band cultivates is an attractive alternative to the crass pragmatism and/or self-righteous nihilism of their contemporaries. But where my own fave formalists the Shoes are honest enough to focus their lyrics on the very limited social milieu essential to the nurture of such alternatives, these guys evade specifics via metaphor and have the presumption to reproduce their hazy poetry on the inner sleeve. Which may help explain why the music sometimes almost drifts away. B

CULTURE CLUB

“Walking Up With The House On Fire” (Epic)

George is such a cutie-pie I was delighted to watch him take off, but since I bought neither the worshipful new-Smokey analysis nor the dismissive because-he-wears-dresses theory, I could never figure out his means of propulsion. I know why he may not stay up there, though: because he wears dresses. So I wish this sounded more like old Smokey. But despite a discernible shift to the left in his soft focus and a catchy censored single, it’s part three of more-of-the-same. B

THE DEL-LORDS “Frontier Days”

(EMI America)

Unless you see a band week after week, you have to wait till the album to gauge the depth of their songwriting, and I’m pleased to report that these nice guys do all right by the sounding. The melodies are pretty basic, but that was to be expected; what’s important is that they stick. The lyrics go for Blasters-style populism and achieve it with fewer downhome details and more international perspective. And if there’s less singing and playing here than four or five gigs made me hope, that just makes me hope that the next time they’ll go commercial enough to hire a real producer instead of nice guy Lou Whitney. A -

ANNA DOMINO “East And West”

(Les Disques du Crepuscule import)

Fans of femme folk-new wave—Raincoats, Young Marble Giants, etc.—should check out this EP even though the artist floats her lyricism in a gentle electronic wash and doesn’t appear to hail from Britannia. Me, I’m a fan of early Tom Tom Club, Velvets-era Nico, and Maureen Tucker singing “Afterhours.” Hypnotic with no cosmic aspirations, I guess she could be labeled spaced out, but in a dreamy, nicely sophisticated way. Composer of best song: Aretha Franklin. Time: 22:08. A -

EXPLAINER “The Awakening”

(B’s)

It’s a little disorienting to encounter a dance music that lives or dies aesthetically by its lyrics—partying’s not supposed to be that way. Yet here it is. Back when Winston Henry was a struggling young soca man, he came by his soubriquet honestly; these days he doesn’t miss a chance to kiss Reagan’s ass or make like "our skin color not get in our way.” As a result (?), his groove gets nowhere. Interesting that back when he was a struggling young soca man his “Lorraine” sported the most ferocious pop hook the style has ever known, while now his pop moves are reduced to a certain slackening of the tempo and the occasional cheesy key texture. Address: 1285 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216. C +

THE FORCE M.D.’s “Love Letters”

(Tommy Boy)

If only there was a little something to the songwriting, the cute idea of anchoring a falsetto group to a rap rhythm section might have produced more than an exceedingly cute album. Certainly the fivesome sing sweet and rap sharp, and the LeBlanc—Winbish—McDonald bottom is almost lithe enough for a top, even on the reggae. But not quite.B +

FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” (Island)

Hype is a word I try to use no more normatively than I do guitar—one’s almost as intrinsic to rock ’n’ roll as the other. And this is a truly great hype. We’re not just talking spectacularly entertaining, like the dripping labia of Mom’s Apple Pie, or spectacularly profitable, like the Monkees, or both, like the “Thriller” video. We’re talking hype as primary signifier, as a carrier of rich, profound, and potentially subversive meanings. I love the hype right down to the album package, and will even grant that the appalling quality of the band’s music enriches the meaning further. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be caught dead telling anybody to listen to it. The singles side is OK—“Relax” has proven itself a fetching fuckmantra, “Two Tribes” is fair-to-middling political art. But on the whole Frankie are a marginally competent arena-rock band who don’t know how to distinguish between effeminacy and pretension, like an English Grand Funk gone disco. Follow the ads by all means. Watch the videos. And cop yourself some inner sleeves. C

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS "Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth” (MCA)

Seekers after the unvarnished rock ’n’ roll truth needn’t haunt used record stores and postbohemian beer joints—here it is in all its generic glory, with an independent woman on top providing a pre-ideological political kicker. The problem for those of us who still care about "art” is that it’s all a little too generic—in 1984 they may be better than the Rolling Stones, but they’ll never be as good. I don’t miss Mick—if Joan’s lyrics are rarely clever, they’re always pithy, and these days she’s the smarter singer—but I do miss Keith, some musician whose writing/playing might make the songs sound like models rather than examples of the genre. B +

LOS LOBOS

“How Will The Wolf Survive?”

(Slash)

This takes generic to a whole different level. Where their EP was a straightforward account of a world-class bar band in command of what we'll call Chicano r&b, a relatively specialized indigenous style with unexploited mass potential, their first Slash LP makes it sound as if they invented the style. Who did the original of that one, you wonder, only to discover that you’re listening to the original. Listen a little more and you figure out that these slices of dance music have lyrics, lyrics rooted in an oppression the artists really know about—the love songs return incessantly to the separation that defines migrant laborers’ lives. And from the moment you hear “I Got Loaded” you’ll know that while Cesar Rosas is merely a generic singer in the best sense, David Hidalgo is some kind of tenor. A

MADONNA “Like A Virgin”

(Sire)

If a woman wants to sell herself as a sex fantasy I’ll take a free ride—as long as the fantasy of it remains out front, so I don’t start confusing image with everyday life. But already she’s so sure of herself she’s asking men and women both to get the hots for the calculating bitch who sells the fantasy even while she bids for the sincerity market where long term superstars ply their trade. And to make the music less mechanical (just like Bowie, right?), she’s hired Nile Rodgers, who I won’t blame for making it less catchy. C +

JUNIE MORRISON “Evacuate Your Seats”

(Island)

Not just guitarless but wholly synthesized, with Junie’s all too childish falsetto playing daddy to a smurf club, this is as half-assed as most P-funk spinoffs even if it wastes a few more ideas I’d like to hear a bigger artist take over. Think maybe George would mastermind a total remix of “Break 6”? B-

“THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS”

(EMI America)

As minstrelsy goes, this is good-hearted stuff (and as minstrelsy, it had better be). The reason it doesn’t quite come off isn’t that it’s good-hearted, either: the band is outrageous enough, though probably not the way it thinks it is. Perhaps there’s a clue in this mysterious observation from spokesperson Flea: "Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow have great raps, but not that great music with it.” In a bassist, that’s serious delusion. B -

MARGARET ROADKNIGHT “Living In The Land Of Oz”

(Redwood)

In Australia she’s been dubbed “queen of jazz,” which says more about Australia than it does about jazz. As does she—what’s most appealing on this U.S. compilation is topical (and usually humorous) material about her native continent that’s recommended to Nick Cave and Olivia Newton-John. But though she musters an impressively gruff blues timbre and on occasion some rudimentary swing, I’m not convinced she always goes flat on purpose, and when she emotes she may strain the credulity of those who set their standards by Nick Cave and Olivia Newton-John. Address: 476 West MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94609. B +

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RICKY SKAGGS “Country Boy”

(Epic)

Act authentic for too long and it begins to sound like an act even if it isn’t. I mean, didn’t John Denver preempt the title of this thing? Oh right, his went “Thank God I’m A Country Boy.” God, I bet Ricky wished he could get away with that one. B

SKELETON CREW “Learn To Talk”

(Rift)

Fred Frith and Tom Cora’s fractured songforms on “Side Free” make their seditious point more sharply than I’d feared, but I’m glad I had the sense to play “Side Dirt” first—I do prefer songs to songforms. The post-Weill sound and critique will strike a minor chord with admirers of Henry Cow and the Art Bears, though especially given Frith’s rough, sardonic vocals, the presentation’s less formal—which I also prefer. Available from: Box 663, New York, NY 10022. B +

GEORGE STRAIT “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind”

(MCA)

As an unreconstructed rock ’n’ roller, I prefer my country music out on the edge—if not zany or wild-ass than at least (and often at best: Jones, Frizzell, Wynette) deeply soulful. Despite his regard for the zany, wild-ass, and deeply soulful verities, what I get from Strait is a convincing show of honesty. And what I get from his best song selection to date is a convincing show of tuneful honesty. B +

RICHARD THOMPSON “Small Town Romance”

(Hannibal)

What can it mean that the five best cuts on this live-and-unaccompanied-in-1982 cult item are the five he’s never recorded before? It means that as a singer he has real trouble carrying slow songs that were designed for Linda and/or a band, or both, and that his solo versions of the fast ones can’t compete with a memory. Granted, his new songs are so winning cultists won’t care. What this half-cultist wonders is how much he knew when he wrote the oh-sotrue “Love Is Bad For Business.” B