Christgau Consumer Guide

Christgau Consumer Guide

DEPARTMENTS

BY

ROBERT CHRISTGAU

STEVE ARRINGTON “Dancin’ In The Key Of Life"

(Atlantic)

Unless you count Amy Grant, pop doesn’t get more explicitly Christian—not only does the back cover thank “Jesus Christ” rather than the usual “God,” but the record invites us to convert. Granted, Arrington’s a Jesse Jackson type Christian—remembers that petroleum is still a finite resource, takes pains to acknowledge the right to choose in a song where the abortion isn’t done. But his positivity theology doesn’t sell the music any more than some other ideology would. The music sells the theology, and augments it: for the first time he’s making like a songwriter, designing hooks for his vital rhythms and mellifluous vocal cartoons. The title track lives up to its dreams of Stevie, both songs about babies are choice, and it all comes together with the goofy yet spiritual scat coda to “Stand With Me” (which means stand up for Jesus, children). A-

“BEVERLY HILLS COP”

(MCA)

Highlights: Patti LaBelle contained, Harold Faltermeyer kissing Herbie Hancock’s ass, the System rocking and rolling again, Shalamar writing to order (buy the 12-inch). Redundancy: the Pointer Sisters (buy the album— theirs—if you must). Lowlights: Junior, Rockie Robbins. Low life: Danny Elfman (formerly of Oingo Boingo), Glenn Frey (formerly of the Eagles). B-

“THE BREAKFAST CLUB”

(A&M)

Disco domo emeritus Keith Forsey is the great spirit behind this consumer fraud. He even wrote the Simple Minds hit, which in a rare moment of aesthetic perspicuity they’ve disowned, as well as utterly negligible songs for such artists as Elizabeth Daily, Karla DeVito and Wang Chung. Plus one, two, three, four instrumentals. D-

“DESPERATE TEENAGE LOVEDOLLS” (Gasatanka)

Wish I could report that these 13 posthardcore toons for an amateur Super-8 rock ’n’ roll flick constitute a stronger soundtrack than anything the youth marketers over in the pricier part of Hollywood have commissioned. Unfortunately, it sounds like a Rodney Bingenheimer anthology. Address: Box 2896, Torrance, CA 90509. C +

“FISHBONE”

(Columbia EP)

Appropriating sartorial details from the Specials, Dizzy Gillespie, Jimi Hendrix, Stepin Fetchit and I don’t know who else, these six black L.A. teenagers show a flair for visual outrage worthy of George Clinton himself, though funk is far down on an equally eclectic list of musical influences that subsumes metal, new wave and cool-jazz finger-pop into ska like Prince Buster never imagined it. It’s all too scattered, without songwriting focus, but in a world of Prince clones and ugly presidents these guys are cause for hope. B +

“THE GOONIES”

(Epic)

As I hope you’ve figured out, the New Soundtrack is no such thing: It’s a cross-promotional concept that permits record bizzers and music bizzers to exploit each other’s distribution. But because the film comes first, the music pros work to order, whether or not their songs function thematically or appear in the movies at all. So even when the resulting albums don’t suffer from the hodgepodge effect that afflicts all compilations and goes double when music is slotted into vastly disparate moods and locales, they still breed hackwork. Which is why this one is such a relief. First of all, it’s not hodgepodge: high-register vocals predominate, dance beats mesh. And not only do the likes of Teena Marie, Luther Vandross and Philip Bailey come in a peak form, but REO Fucking Speedwagon produces an actual anthem, John Williams’s scion Joseph contributes a nifty pop funk tune and Dave Grusin himself strolls sweetly under the closing credits. Bless music consultant Cyndi Lauper, whose two good-to-excellent tracks almost get lost by comparison. A-

GREEN ON RED “Gas Food Lodging”

(Enigma)

They used to be fun, partly because you couldn’t tell whether they knew how risibly their whacked-out post-adolescent angst came across. So now they unveil their road/roots/maturity album, which extols heroic dreams and reviews “We Shall Overcome” around the usual Americana—drunks, murderers, husbands who’ve “passed away.” Fun it’s not. And in addition to the melodies thinning out, as melodies will, the playing’s somehow gotten sloppier. Address: Box 2896, Torrance, CA 90509. B-

KLYMAXX

“Meeting In The Ladies Room” (Constellation)

In theory, these ladies are my favorite Prince rip because the attitude they give off all over the room is their own. But though they and their men friends do nice stuff with those layered robot rhythms, their attitude thins out fierce once they’ve had their say at the top of each side. B-

“LONE JUSTICE”

(Geffen)

Although Maria McKee sure does have a big voice for such a young thing, sometimes I get the feeling she’s playing grownup with it— “After The Flood,” about staying put on the family farm come hell or high water, doesn’t exactly reflect the personal experience of someone who met her guitarist in a parking lot in the San Fernando Valley. Not that I doubt her passionate sincerity. Just that I find it generates more credibility when she worries about her man working late or warns him not to insult her in front of his friends. B +

“BILL MORRISSEY”

(Reckless)

There’s 10 years of rough jobs and bumming around in these trenchant, unassuming songs, with no aura of folkie slumming to stink things up. Morrissey took those jobs to make money, not to gather material, and he went on the road to get away from home. Of course, industrial New England leaves its stamp on everything he writes anyway—his lyrics are so local, so devoid of pop universals, that even if he wanted more than finger-picking on his LP I doubt anyone would give him the budget for it. Which sad to say leaves only a stylized isthat-John-Prine? drawl to carry his familiar little tunes. Address: 21 Lake View Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138. B +

TURN TO PAGE 54

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12

PABLO MOSES “Tension”

(Alligator)

Moses’s singsong melodies have always been simplistic even by reggae standards, but on these Cautionary ditties neither lyrics nor groove manage the sly grace that’s made his finest work so subtly hypnotic (cf. Mango’s new compilation). Catchy, yes, and righteous too, but as annoying at times as a Sugar Crisps commercial. B

PAJAMA SLAVE DANCERS “Cheap Is Real”

(Pajamarama)

Like most .collegiate humor, this isn’t as funny as it thinks it is, and like most collegiate humor it holds up against competing professional product. “Farm Rap” is recommended to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, “No Dick” to the Meatmen. And from nerd-macho proem through lyric-sheet verses to the climactically yearning chorus of “I want play hide-the-salami with you,” the magnificent “I Want To Make Love To You” is on a level with Spinal Tap itself. Anyway, isn’t it about time somebody covered “Horse With No Name”? Address: 10 Spring Street, Westfield, MA 01085. B

TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS “Southern Accent”

(MCA)

Petty’s problem isn’t that he’s dumb, or even that people think he’s dumb, although they have reason to. It’s that he feels so sorry for himself he can’t think straight. Defending the South made sense back when Ronnie Van Zant was writing “Sweet Home Alabama,” but in the Sun Belt era it’s just pique. The modernizations of sometime co-producer Dave Stewart mitigate the neoconservative aura somewhat, but unmitigating it right back is Petty’s singing, its descent from stylization into affectation most painful on side one’s concept songs. Side two is less consequential, and better. Note, however, that its show-stopper is “Spike,” in which a bunch of rednecks, I mean good old boys, prepare to whump a punk. It’s satire. Yeah sure. B-

“PLASTICLAND”

(Enigma)

The fairyland psychedelics and many-hued outfits on the cover led me to dismiss the music as camp satire or idiot nostalgia. But “Euphoric Trapdoor Shoes” and “Rattail Comb” work for their laughs, and other songs achieve an even greater complexity of tone. The group’s Anglophile diction can be prissy or sarcastic or acid-wild; their music is gimmicky and even silly sometimes, but like “She’s A Rainbow” or “Itchycoo Park” it’s also melodic and pleasurable and strong. Almost alone among the neopsychedelics, they actually have something to say about the ’60s: they understand that to write lines like “Loneliness is a companion/Loveliness is all she feels” may well mean you’re foolish but doesn’t necessarily make you a fool. Address: Box 2896, Torrance, CA 90509. B +

R.E.M.

“Fables Of The Reconstruction” (IRS.)

If you had any doubts, new producer Joe Boyd clinches it: their formal frame of reference is folk-rock, nothing less and nothing more. Because they’re Southerners, not to mention white boys with 20 years to get their chops together, they’ve always defeated folk-rock’s crippling stasis. They have a good beat, and you can boogie to them. But as formalists they valorize the past by definition, and if their latest title means anything it’s that they’re slipping inexorably into the vague comforts of regret, mythos and nostalgia. Trading energy for ever richer textures, their impressionism sacrifices its paradoxical edginess: it’s doleful, slower, solidly grounded but harder to boogie to nevertheless. B +

THE SMITHS “Meat Is Murder”

(Sire)

It makes a certain kind of sense to impose teen-macho aggression on your audience— for better or worse, macho teens are expected to make a thing of their unwonted hostility. These guys impose their post-adolescent sensitivity, thus inspiring the sneaking suspicion that they’re less sensitive than they come on— passive-aggressive, the pathology is called, and it begs for a belt in the chops. Only the guitar hook of “How Soon Is Now,” stuck on by their meddling U.S. label, spoils the otherwise pristine fecklessness of this prize-winning U.K. LP. Remember what the Residents say: “Hitler was a vegetarian.” C

STING

“The Dream Of The Blue Turtles” (A&M)

Not since Simon’s dangling conversations has a pop hero made such a beeline for the middlebrow cliche. Romantically he runs the gamut from if-you-love-somebody-set-themfree to each-man-kills-the-thing-he-loves, and of course he doesn’t ignore the cosmic side of things—“There is a deeper world than this/That you don’t understand.” I’m pleased by his pro-miner sentiments, but wonder why he has to (my italics) “hope the Russians love their children too,” since I’ve always assumed they do. And displacing the Police’s sere dynamics we have bathtubs full of demijazz, drenching this self-aggrandizing and no doubt hitbound project in a whole new dimension of phony class. C +

“VISION QUEST”

(Geffen)

This flick isn’t an item on my particular grapevine, but between the sculpted pecs on the back cover and the “Only The Young” kickoff inside, I figure it’s about Heroic Youth. They’re “Hot Blooded,” they’re “Hungry For Heaven,” they’re gonna “Shout To The Top,” and their idea of inspirational art is some amalgam of pop metal and dance-oriented schlock. Given the basic idea, these tracks are surprisingly OK, but only one fires my corpuscles: Don Henley’s “She’s On The Zoom,” about a Dumb Chick. B +

XTC

“The Big Express”

(Geffen)

Remember when Difford & Tilbrook were supposed to be writing a musical? Sounds like a job for Partridge & Moulding. Name it after “The Everyday Story Of Smalltown.” Keep them working at the proper scale, and be the best thing for steam-powered trains since Ray Davies. B

DWIGHT YOAKAM “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.”

(Oak EP)

You’d think in the Skaggs-Strait-Anderson era some major would give this bluegrass-tinged hardsell a shot. He sings with as much twang power as any of them, and writes too. Maybe the problem is that he’s so serious—consorts with suspected rock ’n’ rollers (just listen to that drjjmmer), yet never falls off the barstool. And to tell the truth, I could do with a few laughs myself. Address: 6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90038. B +