TOM WAITS Rain Dogs (Island)

by Edouard Dauphin

“I’ve got nothing to say and I’m saying it.”—Allen Ginsberg

Ever since he first slouched onto the pop music scene, back in the early ’70s, Tom Waits has evoked memories of beat generation heroes, Kerouac’s “madmen bums and angels,” who explored and even celebrated the dark recesses of postwar America. That Waits has found an audience not necessarily versed in beat icons like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, and that he has withstood charges that he is little more than a one-man beatnik revival attest to Waits’s peculiar sensitivity and uncaringly selfdestructive instinct for survival.

Rain Dogs compares well only sporadically with vintage Waits albums and it’s doubtful whether the producing hand—no matter how shaky—of Bones Howe has ever been more sorely missed. Caroming through no fewer than 19 songs (Who does he think he is, Elvis Costello?), Waits doesn’t so much cajole and even im-

plicate the listener, as he’s done in the past, as bombard him with an array of vocal impressions that may call the blatant impostures of a Leon Redbone, the very worst excesses of Robert Newton in a Treasure Island movie or—who knows?—the supremely sublime dumbness of Lee Marvin growling his way through “Wand’rin’ Star.” But let’s not forget Lee had a number one single in Britain with that strained little record.

Having said that, however, it should be noted that Waits never sets the table without providing a cornucopia of musical and lyrical delights. On Rain Dogs, he is abetted by the likes of the Uptown Horns and Keith Richards—not a bad step up for a vagrant who, not too long ago, was duetting with Crystal Gayle,

fer Chrissake. Wordwise, Tom still has his good stuff and songs such as “Gun Street Girl” and “Union Square” reek with the kind of bourbon-soaked clarity that has permeated his vision since the earliest days and that brought about comparisons to the bop prosody subterraneans of the ’50s in the first place.

Best bets, if you want to avoid below par Waits and tunes that will remind you of native chants from Skull Island are the above mentioned numbers, along with “Tango Till They’re Sore,” which is oddly reminiscent of Louis Armstrong and “Blind Love,” which, if there really was any justice in the hit singles racket “coulda been a contender.” Then there’s The Dauph’s personal favorite, “Walking Spanish,” with drunkenly ex-

quisite lines like: “Tomorrow morning there’ll be laundry/But he’ll be somewhere else to hear the call/Don’t say goodbye he’s just leaving early/He’s walking spanish down the hall.” Could be my life story. Yours too, if you’re not careful. Or even if you are.

A new Tom Waits album deserves your attention. Even if Rain Dogs doesn’t command your attention the way other Waits efforts have in the past, it still offers an intriguing glimpse through bloodshot eyes at a world where nothing is everything and “closing time” is just an empty warning.

PREFAB SPROUT

Two Wheels Good (Epic)

The group name may suggest omething from the avant-garde Ki it thore ni li+n they re coming from. Prefab Sprout make it clear on this second album, produced by Thomas Dolby and released in the U.K. as Steve McQueen (why not?), that they are more in the mode of such pop/jazz acts as Sade and Style Council, with individualistic touches, to be sure, but there you have it. On their first album, Swoon, this direction was somewhat obscured by lead singer/songwriter Paddy McAloon’s (occasionally) poetic wordiness and eccentric compositional structures—the new album’s comparative lyric sparseness and conventional pop song fealty make their light pop/jazz approach more evident. Like many pop groups who survive long enough to make a second album, the idiosyncracies are played down and the relationship to some particular current pop trend is emphasized. Which is bad news if you liked them for their oddness, possibly good news if you didn’t.

Being a fan of oddness, I don’t think this one’s as good as the first. Also, I have trouble with jazz-tinged pop—the effect always strikes me as craftily calculated to simulate sophistication. Why bother? And too often here the group crosses that fine line not only between easy listening and worth-hearing music but also between lyrics that are subtly off-center and preciously sappy. “Desire As” has the line “I’ve got six things on my mind, you’re no longer one of them” which is not bad, but it also has “desire is a sylph-figured creature who changes her own mind,” which is pretty icky. Really, “sylph-figured creature” isn’t that far from “woodland nymph” and the next thing you know you’re playing a bamboo flute and wearing a Donovan-esque fey Robin Hood outfit.

Having voiced these major reservations, I must add that McAloon still comes up with a pithy aphorism now and then and has a pleasant enough softtoned but intense vocal style, appropriate for his somewhat doomy love songs. Also, the arrangements show some care, particularly in the clever use of the synthesizer to augment the basic guitar-bass-drum trio (the Dolby touch?). Now if they could just find a decent use for covocalist Wendy Smith, who is pretty much reduced here to background “oohs” and subverting McAloon’s vocals with unnecessary sweetening.

Richard C. Walls

KATE BUSH

Hounds Of Love (EMI America)

If they were going to run a contest for Most Irritating Rock Star, there’d be plenty of candidates. The Smiths, David Lee Roth, Sting, Stevie Nicks, Nikki Sixx, and the list goes on. All of these folks have something to recommend them, yes but they also have something in their music that puts a lot of peoples’ teeth on edge. Kate Bush has caused a lot of teeth to be ground down, but, unlike the folks listed above, she hasn’t been played enough on American radio for Americans to get past the surface annoyances in her style. Hounds Of Love, irritants and all, is a truly thrilling record. I know the last thing you need in your life is more irritation, but you really oughta trust me on this one and give Kate a chance.

In case you’ve been too irritated to find out who she is: Kate Bush is a 27-year-old British woman—reportedly rich and veddy, veddy cultured—who writes and arranges and produces and sings and started having hit records in her homeland about eight years ago. They love their Weird Kate over there— she’s incredibly beautiful, and she does art rock just like those wacked out Brits love it, all ec-

centric and convoluted and overwrought. There have been better Kate Bush LPs and worse ones, so say the aficionados. At times her love for literary lyrics can be downright problematic for the listener who might wonder just what in the hell she’s actually talking about. And the overwrought music—well, there can be too many notes crammed into one song, you know? But when Bush exercises a little selfcontrol and does a little editing, nobody does better with “Tortured Poetic Romance” and “What Does Life Mean?” and “What Does That Bird Outside My Window Really Symbolize?” In other words, if you’re cosmically alone at three in the morning, Kate Bush is the one to keep you company.

I wasn’t sure I’d like Hounds Of Love, actually. I’d enjoyed the unrepentant weirdness of some of her videos (she was there way before MTV) and certain older songs like “Wuthering Heights,” which Pat Benatar once covered.

But the last LP, The Dreaming, was just too much filagree and fuss—like a room wallpapered entirely in paisley. When the cassette for Hounds arrived, I took it on my daily jog. Two listens and I was hooked. Underneath things like breathy singing or goofy metaphors or whatever else bugs you, there’s this 45-minute wonderland where your imagination acts like a kid whose parents are away for the weekend. You see things, taste things, feel things—you bring as much to the experience as Bush did. Setting loose the imagination—isn’t that what music is supposed to do? God, for that kind of experience she can make me grind my teeth until they’re nubs.

Laura Fissinger

ABC

How To Be A Zillionaire (Mercury)

On their ridiculously overblown debut, The Lexicon Of Love, ABC got lucky twice. “The Look Of Love” (not the Lesley Gore classic) and “Poison Arrow” overcame overwrought settings and snared you with some luscious hooks. On the luckless, hookless follow-up, Beauty Stab, they fell flat on their silly faces and just laid there while millions shrugged their shoulders and walked on by. And now on How To Be A Zillionaire, they’ve returned after a sizable hiatus with a revamped line-up and a load of new material to present us with what has to be one of the year’s biggest clinkers. How do they manage to maintain such a level of consistency?

It’s easy when you’ve got a crashing, hand-wringing bore like Martin Fry at the helm. _ Thanks to Fry’s stuffy, flatulent I leadership, ABC is a wretched ] mix of Bowie at his most pretenI tious, Ferry at his most meloI dramatic, a dozen hackneyed j techno-pop groups with witless I delusions of grandeur, and offI Broadway musifcals that close on opening night.

The songs here are pathetically mundane. Combine that with Fry’s bargain basement emoting and a production that pushes everything to excess and you’re talking major disaster. All the beat box techniques, the flashy synth moves, the bloated brass arrangements (makes early Chicago look sedate!), the 101 vocal tracks—all this and more is thrown on in a desperate atI tempt to liven things up. If you listen carefully, you can hear Zillionaire collapse under its own bloated weight.

A half-decent number like the semi-subdued “Be Near Me” qualifies as a genuine respite from the bombast surrounding it (Fry does his best to sink it with an anemic reading). Fatalities Listen to In Square Circle in the context of today’s modern, hard-edged R&B and it comes across as kinda bland. But there’s a lot more here than meets the ear. Beneath the placid surface are layers of interwoven electronic textures, teasing along lush melodies, and aren’t those at a premium in today’s rap-happy, hip-hop black music world? Yes, friends, Songs are the Key in Stevie Wonder’s Life, and In Square Circle has 10 of ’em that actually function as a unified whole. By the time you’re through, each one has been indelibly etched into your consciousness, tuned to yer pulse and wired to yer tapping feet. And not just in the cloying, molasses mold of “I Just Called To Say I Love You,” either. are everywhere. “Fear Of The World” and “Vanity Kills” go heavy on the whiplash percussion while unbelievably dumb horns buttress equally stupid disco femme vocals.

GEOMETRY ’N’ STUFF

STEVIE WONDER In Square Circle (Tamla)

Roy Train

It bubbles, it gurgles, it coos. You were maybe expecting “Fingertips Part III”? In Square Circle is a seamless piece of synthetic aural gratification that sounds deceptively simple. It took Stevie Wonder five years to record this? Of course, Stevland Morris isn’t exactly the hardest working man in show biz, but this is ridiculous. Stevie’s shown more verve giving Grammy acceptance speeches than he demonstrates here. Meanwhile, he’s been nudged from the center by Michael Jackson, outflanked on the left by Prince and, on the right, by Lionel Richie, which places him dangling in the middle of the road, the King of Pre-Digested Soul, the Master of Masticated Adult Contemporary Muzak. Uptight? Not Stevie Wonder, man. More like mellow.

Stevie does tend to slip into sentimentality, but the romance on In Square Circle is not all sweetness and light. There’s an edge of sadness and inevitable loss in the best of the love songs which makes the new album a welcome throwback to the early ’70s quartet of Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Don’t be surprised if he beats a path for some more Grammies to add to his collection. And, while the Wonder-ful One makes few concessions to today’s rhythm machinations, it only points up how ahead of his time he once was.

“Part Time Lover” is the first single, a perky ode to classic Motown that begins with the insinuating bass thump and single keyboard riff of “My World Is Empty Without You.” The rather surprising lyric is about a guy who juggles mistresses, only to get an anonymous phone call from his lover’s other lover. The theme of passion’s bittersweet ironies can also be found in the noodling synth lines of “I Love You Too Much,” the multi-tiered narrative of “Stranger On The Shore of Love” and the painful confession of “Never In Your Sun.” Ignoring the greeting-card platitudes of the two ballads, “Overjoyed” and “Whereabouts,” In Square Circle’s love songs are tough-minded and unsparing in self-criticism, a welcome improvement over the pablum of “I Just Called To Say...”

Side two is where Stevie gets political, and, if you look to him for that kind of insight, let’s just say Wonder’s no threat to Ted Koppel. “Spiritual Walkers” is a straight-faced defense of religious cultists who spread the Word on the street, while “Land Of La La” is a Los Angeles Yupdate on Stevie’s own “Living For The City” about urban corruption of the innocent.

The LP’s centerpiece, though, is Stevie Wonder’s passionate declaration, “It’s Wrong (Apartheid),” in which he creates a true African anthem and call-toarms, denounciating the evils of that social system, couched in the Continent’s sweet chants, talking drums and multiple crossrhythms. When you stop to marvel at how many millions of people will be singing along and absorbing Stevie’s message, the superstar’s global popularity and ability to reach the masses of his wide-ranging constituency becomes inseparable from his aims. If we have to suffer through Stevie Wonder warbling for the phone company to hear him sing, “It’s Wrong,” the trade-off may just be a bargain. For that alone, In Square Circle was worth the wait.

“(How To Be A) Millionaire” employs Chic-like guitar, while “So Hip It Hurts” employs “Shaft”-like guitar and goosed “whoo!”s from more dopey babes. Neither one is worth a damn but both pale beside the Excedrin headache proportions of “15 Storey Halo” which sounds like Manhattan Transfer tripping on some extremely bad acid.

Speaking of bummers, how could I forget the putrid Duranish fey-funk of “A To Z”? It serves as a half-assed way for the band to introduce themselves one by one, including the token female who I quote verbatim (Tipper Gore’s gonna love this): “Hi. I’m Eden. I want you...to kiss...my... snatch.”

Well, Eden, I want you...and the rest of your gang...to consider early retirement. Because—confidentially—you stink.

Craig Zeller

THOMPSON TWINS

Here’s To Future Days (Arista)

Oh joy, another Thompson Twins record. Yet another chance to have every rancid cliche about British-synthesizerbands-with-silly-haircuts endorsed in full. Again on their fourth LP, the Twins display their uncanny talent for turning fair, openminded people (like yours truly) into raging Anglophobes, hell-bent on cracking every synthesizer on the planet over every dumb coif in sight.

Actually, on the sheer dullness scale, the Thompsons have outdone themselves this time. On previous outings, there did seem to exist something akin to hooks, if you could dig below the soulless pod people vocals and snooze-alarm production. For some reason many people (and even some rock critics) seemed interested in digging. On this baby, those same people may wish to perform similar excavations on “Lay Your Hands On Me,” which has already been judged catchy enough to become a Swatch commercial. But even die-hard fans may have trouble staying awake through an entire side. Nile Rodgers’s production (which I’d hoped would add some punch) doesn’t do squat here. It’s just the usual Thompson’s wall-of-pampers effect.

To beef things up, the group have added a bit more guitar to the proceedings, but there’s still nothing akin to “edge.” They’ve included their less-than-riproaring version of “Revolution,” which provided one of the few moments of genuine hilarity at Live Aid. Steve Stevens offers guitar on that one as well as on something called “Roll Over,” which sounds exactly like at least six other tracks on the album, not to mention six on Howard Jones’ latest release.

The group’s lyrics have also hit a new low. A band that dresses as gratuitously as the Thompsons should think twice before titling a song “Emperors Clothes,” though I guess it was sort of smart to include a track which plugs “Tokyo,” since that may be the only market left for these guys to milk after the rest of the world catches on. Of course, the idea of a band doing a song about how exotic Japan is in 1985 deserves a special cliche award. And speaking of cliches, can you believe all this "future days” stuff—in the LP title, song and the band’s management company? I mean, who could be naive enough to think of the Thompson’s style of synth-fashion as futuristic or even honestly modern? Instead it’s just an ’80s version of blandout corporate rock—Foreigner in funny clothes.

Jim Farber

JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP

Scarecrow (Riva)

I There have been a few times I when I started to believe that I John Cougar Mellencamp really I was the dumb bunny he could I come across as in his television I interviews. But each time I I suspected John of terminal I hickdom, he yanked me back in" to pink-housed reality with a creative move so startlingly could’ve thought of it. And now there’s the new Scarecrow, which surpasses the already pressive American Fool and Huh so shatteringly that I’ll never doubt this guy again. And I’m dressing no one but the rock roll consumer here, when I that Scarecrow is not only John Mellencamp’s best album ever, but most likely the best anybody’s done this year. Despite its extremely timely themes of loss and reaffirmation

upon Southern Indiana, the true genius of Scarecrow is its raw, uncompromising sound. All which vibrates around Kenny Aronoff’s big bad drums, magnificently “distorted and over-modulated” that they’ll knock all the soulless drums build and build in ominous ferocity throughout the “Rain The Scarecrow” opener, Mellencamp’s vocals, Cascella’s darkly Animalesque organ, and the other instruments chime in with equal anger. even though the song is “about” the problem of farm foreclosures, the total music is so powerful it conveys universal existential rage. I’ve listened to “Rain The Scarecrow” dozens of already, each time it just me down and flattens me And Scarecrow songs “Lonely Ol’ Night” and tween A Laugh And A Tear”

“Small Town,” for all that may sound like past hits from band, still all have that relentless anger and courage rushing beneath them. This lower-than-zero Midwestern status to get away with uncomas promisingly personal & intense rock ’n’ roll. Mellencamp have a James Dean fixation, all things considered, that’s more modern than the romantic expressionism Springsteen sorbed from West Side Story an impressionable age. Scarecrow is full of great smashing in their something matters casualness. Even

“Justice And Independence ’85,” which has already taken some critical flak as an awkwardly symbolic “fable,” works fine for me. People out here the Great Midwest really do names like “Justice” and “Nation,” and the song’s actually literal an everyday story as Bob “Minnesota Bats” Dylan’s 27 dependence ’85” if you like, though. For an unabashed them, try the rousing “You’ve Got To Stand For Somethin’,” which is not John playing coy, but putting his excruciating process of self-discovery on the line for us one more time. Again, Mellencamp couldn’t get away with great lyric one if didn’t have that 120 percent

music behind him at every step. Even though Aronoff’s drums are upfront in the mix, Larry Crane’s and Mike Wanchic’s guitars and Toby Myers’s bass are rigl^t there at every snare/kick crash satori. John couldn’t have a better band to express his spacious Midwestern visions even if he permitted himself to hire non-Hoosiers. Richard Riegel

ROCK OF THE WESTILES

CRUZADOS CRUZADOS (Arista)

Billy Altman

obsessively scouring the desert plains for remnants of some mythical Sierra Madre-type treasure, the Cruzados gallop through their diamond-in-therough-hewn major label debut album, pistolas smoking, as feverishly search for rock roll’s promised land. restless are they? “Yesterday dead and gone,” lead singer Larriva succinctly explains to girl he’s about to leave in of that long, endless road. “I a rising sun.” How urgent is calling? “Every hour makes older as the end becomes clear,” Larriva howls into the wilderness of a song called ‘‘Wasted smart that I knew only another these wolves to survive? “Some day,” Larriva sneers on the of the same name, “I keep ing you...Some day, you’ll what I can do...Just wait...Some day.” Nominally part of the Southern California country/rock/punk

scene over the last few years a previous incarnation as Plugz), the Cruzados are a band whose country & western leanings are completely over to latter side—a fact which, quite refreshingly, sets them apart from the rest of that generally misguided wagon train. No ly invoked Gram Parsons spirits hanging overhead; rather, eerie abandon of those “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” meticulously reconstructed droppings, either; when Steven Hufsteder’s lead guitar broncbucks it out of the chute, ears get trampled with hoofs audiophiles into a state-of-the-art were sharpened on “Apache and “Hang ’Em High.” While the Cruzados’ rocker-as-

lonely-desperado stance is one we’re well acquainted with, it to the band’s credit that they’ve molded it to their particular specifications. Hence, “Motorcycle Girl,” a weather-beaten, dirt-under-the-finger nails lustorama, churns along to an terly out-of-fashion—and utterly appropriate—boogie beat. “Suppose you find what you’re looking for? What will you do with it?” asks Larriva, while Hufsteder’s guitar burns rubber in the passing lane.

Animalistic “It’s My Life” ancestry with a punk-based Bo Diddley through Eric Burdon arrangement, complete with wanted-dead-or-alive maracas. And both sides’ closers, “Flor de Mai” and “Just Like Roses,” exposed-nerve music, from ner-

South of the Border roots with lilting, emotional melodies and blistering sun-scorched solos. By the end of the rather cinematic instrumental coda of “Just Like Roses,” one can almost see the draped across their chests like bandoliers from rock’s Brave New West. Highway 61, look out. ever written. Feel free to read

Richard Riegel

STARSHIP

Knee Deep In The Hoopla (Grunt)

In the first place, I hate dopes like Starship. In the second place, I hate them even more as they get older and their music gets so sterile that surgeons should wipe their hands on their dopey albums before they open the chest cavity. And in the third place, I hate them in the first place.

Knee deep in the hoopla? Sure they are. I think we can all accept that at face value. Why they don’t get around to mentioning that they’re over their heads in the sheer mundanity of being themselves is anyone’s guess. Well, maybe we’re supposed to figure that out for ourselves.

Consider “Sara,” a song, it’s safe to conclude, that was written to deliberately appeal to saps named Sara or sappy guys who have girlfriends named Sara. (It’s getting to be a popular name; look it up.) Anyway, you can just see some jerk in a lounge with “Sara”—they’re probably both drinking grasshoppers or whatever these morons drink— and the guy looks at her and says, “Sara, storms are brewing in your eyes.” Or “No time is a good time for goodbyes.” Then the saps get hot for each other and go home and listen to this album, which features those very lyrics. Personally, I hope the slut gets pregnant during this song.

Or—if not that one—how about “Hearts Of The World (Will Understand),” where Grace Slick sings “I won’t give into you just ’cause you want me to/Oooh, life’s so complicated.” Now, if you could only over-synth life itself, it’d be a little like a new Starship album.

But only a little. The unrelenting muck that is this record— hell, the producers probably thought their many-voiced choruses were rich and grandiose, when in fact they’re nothing but unrelenting muck— has precious little to do with life, or even the tobacco mosaic virus. I mean it—when they do “Love Rusts,” the “mood” piece oflhis particular disc (I guess), and Gracie sings “Love rusts when it rains on romance”... well, suffice it to say there’s at least a small critical cheering section that wants to hear the Morton Salt Girl try her hand at this. Or “Rock Myself To Sleep,” which is Starship doing Quiet Riot doing Slade and they even got the middle-man, Kevin DuBrow, to sing on it and you can hear him. (His whine is of a different tenor than Mickey Thomas’s whine.) Or the lyricallyunforgivable “We Built This City.” The city’s San Francisco, in case you—quite correctly—feel like blowing it up.

Nope, not much life here at all. But let’s let Starship sum up Knee Deep in their own song, “Before I Go”: “I don’t know where this road ever ends/The point of existence.”

Bless their pointed little existence.

J. Kordosh

MARSHALL CRENSHAW

Downtown (Warner Bros.)

Crenshaw sings like a less nasal John Lennon (whom he portrayed in Beatlemania) with the rough edges smoothed off, becomingly betrays the influence of all of the Beatles’ principal Caucasian influences, favors the guitar sound George Harrison used on “I Feel Fine,” is tuneful and droll (as in his famous “Cynical Girl”), is, in sum, fab in many ways. If this were a just world, he’d be twice as popular as Julian Lennon.

His 1982 debut album s still the one to own, although this has a couple of transcendent moments, most notably the infinitely cool “I’m Sorry (But So Is Brenda Lee),” which has an underlying guitar riff (played on the brightest strings ever recorded!) that dares to evoke the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird,” and the first single, “Little Wild One (No. 5),” which, but for its pat rockabilly blues chorus, would be utterly sublime. Who can resist a line like “All my life is a hollow display when I’m away from my little wild one”? And the artist howls with rare conviction at the end, after an exquisitely Beatlish choral interlude.

Am I trying too hard to find something truly notable about the balance of the album, or is “(We’re Gonna) Shake Up Their Minds” indeed an anthem of gay indifference to straight hostility? First, the artist croons, “In a barroom in the middle of town see all the people try to stare us down when we dance like lovers do,” and then, “Only a moment, but when it’s past both sides, together at last, will really, truly see what it is they don’t wanna be.”

I’m troubled by the fact that Noted Players from Roxy Music, King Crimson, the Hall & Oates band, and NRBQ have taken over from baby brother Robert Crenshaw and little Chris Donato as Crenshaw’s rhythm section on this album, especially since the only remarkable instrumental performance is G.E. Smith’s thrilling guitar solo on “Yvonne.” Mickey Curry’s inability to play an effective country shuffle all but ruins “Like A Vague Memory.” Why Crenshaw took the chance of breaking the loyal Donato’s heart by calling in Tony Levin to play the “Wild One” bass part, say, is anybody’s guess. You could have done it if they’d given you 10 minutes to rehearse!

Whoever art-directed the package’s cover (and they’re identified in the credits) ought to be flung headlong into the bustling boulevards of Burbank. It’s bad enough going in that the artist looks like a junior high school algebra teacher from Des Moines. To depict him as Mr. Sensitive Singer/Songwriter, as has been done here, is to compound the problem incalculably.

If this were a just world, Crenshaw would be bigger than Julian Lennon. And Dwight Twilley, who’s got lots more sexual charisma than Crenshaw (and whose only recent hit, “Girls,” was one of his weaker tracks) would be bigger than both of them put togther, the biggest Beatle legatee in beatdom.

John Mendelssohn

THE DREAM ACADEMY

The Dream Academy (Warner Bros.)

Icky stuff, this. Not only because the Dream Academy are a lame derivative of what used to be progressive (ha!) rock, but also due to the fact that they’re just too much. Sample a couple of these precious tunes and try to keep from gagging— you’ll feel like you’ve gorged on rich, sweet cake icing. That’s icky.

Danger signs abound. Apart from the name of this British trio, which sounds stupid and means nothing to boot, note the producers: lead singer Nick LairdClowes (another idiotic moniker) and David Gilmour. Yes, Gilmour of Pink Floyd, the monumentally dull group that once tried to pass off pigs and walls as serious artistic statements. It figures.

So the clowns in Dream Academy bear the standard for another generation of charlatans, all puffed up like they’ve got heavy messages to impart. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. “In Places On The Run,” a muted ballad worthy of Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, yields these poetic pearls: “What a dream I had/Dressed in colored shawls/ Though the night was so warm/And a nightingale/Sat on a castle wall.” Other tracks show similar airheadedness, inspired by the era of peace and love. However, Dream Academy aren’t competing with the hapless likes of the Three O’clock, who sound positively tough by comparison. No, this is sub-Sgt. Pepper symphonic slush, with “Life In A Northern Town” and “The Edge of Forever” conjuring up unfond memories of early Bee Gees or, worse, Tin Tin, of “Toast And Marmalade For Tea” fame.

Most irritating, Dream Academy assume they’ve mastered a style simply by adapting its most superficial qualities. Thus, to capture the sonic grandeur of Phil Spector, they pile on strings, horns, and percussion pell-mell, without any thought to the kind of sensitive orchestration the original employed. Too bad, really, ’cause Kate St. John seems a talented lass, handling oboe,

cor anglais, and sax with real panache. Maybe she’d like to join a chamber-music group.

On another annoying note, Laird-Clowes fancies himself a soul man. (Plenty of British white boys, including Paul Weller, suffer from the same delusion.) The leisurely “Moving On” lets him dream of being Marvin Gaye, while the rollicking “Bound To Be” finds our uptight hero hanging on for dear life. Imagine an Arthur Murray graduate trying to breakdance.

Actually, there’s one good track: “The Love Parade,” which also happens to be the only cut produced by Alan Tarney (A-Ha, Cliff Richard, et al.). This canny studio vet skillfully pares down the DA’s excesses, leaving a breezy confection suggestive of A Man And A Woman. The fake French accordion eez vairy nice.

But isn’t it pathetic when the best song reaches the heights of romantic movie shlock? Yes.

Jon Young

VARIOUS ARTISTS

‘‘Lost In The Stars”— The Music of Kurt Weill (A&M)

May as well confess out front that since I know one of the producers of this album personally, I may not be as unbiased as usual but tough, y’ know? This is one mutha of an LP, and I ain’t gonna be the only one to think so.

Essentially, it’s the third in a series of album-tributes to dead composers by a wide range of jazz and pop artists. First, there was Amarcord Nina Rota; then there was the Thelonious Monk two-record set, That’s The Way I Feel Now. Both of ’em were great, but this one’s likely to reach more people because Kurt Weill wrote a lot of his material with heavy duty lyricists like Bertolt Brecht. Well over half of this album consists of songs and a lot of ’em are killer.

Like Sting’s “The Ballad Of Mac The Knife.” It’s a different translation from the one most Americans are familiar with, and Sting’s rendition is more a droll body count than the jiving celebration we’ve been used to hearing from people such as Bobby Darin.

Like Lou Reed’s “September Song.” To say Reed makes it his own would be an understatement—“I’d like to spend them wit choo,” he sings—as he turns it into a classic rock ’n’ roll ballad.

Like Tom Waits’s gruff, growly “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” and Aaron Neville’s hauntingly beautiful “Oh Heavenly Salvation.” Like Rundgren and Windo’s intense exercise in technoswing, “Call From The Grave.”

And most of all, like the masterful combination of jazz vocalist Bob Dorough and rock

FINDER, FEELER, HUSKER

HUSKER DU Flip Your Wig (SST Records)

by Joe (He Comes In Colors) Fernbacher

He grinned, he groaned, he wandered, if somewhat tentatively, into the buzzing luminescence of that smell-thrilled temple of forbidden coital madness called, “THE GIRLS GYM.” Rubbing his sweaty palms against his tattered OFFICIAL MULTI-COLORED OZZY OSBOURNE ON TOUR T-Shirt he took a deep slash of his can of piss-warm Busch—the drip, drip, drip of far off showers beckoning him towards madness, exaggerated pyro-images of desire, longing and cannibalistic virgin sacrifice.

Resting his suddenly throbbing head against the grey coolness of a locker, sweet perfumes misting out from its musky confines assaulted his senses, eyes shut tightly his ears desperately sought out the slightest out of place echo. He took a few more swigs of beer, a few deep breathes that boarded on sighs, and suddenly heard it—a muted echo at first, then, a second or two later, a definite, discernible beat.

His legs were moving long before his brain realized it and as

singers Ellen Shipley and Psychedelic Fur Richard Butler doing “Alabama Song.” Butler roughs up the verse while Dorough smooths out the choruses; it’s as successful a performance in its own way as the Doors’ classic version.

Probably the most powerful he rounded corner after corner the sound began to get much more recognizable. The synapses in his head were beginning to click one after another registering one word, one all important word—METAL!

Like a manic rat caught in a simple maze he quickly rounded | what he desperately hoped was I the last corner and saw her:

I STANDING there, smack in I the middle of the gym floor a set I of rings swaying above her head. I Fused to the side of her head I was a magnificently gaudy ghetI toblaster. She was oblivious to I her surrounding and somehow I righteously so.

SHE was short, had long, real I long blonde hair; was wearing an I outrageously tight pair of 501 ’s I and an OFFICIAL MULTII COLORED JUDAS PRIEST I “SCREAMING FOR VENGEI ANCE” TOUR T-Shirt that chumI mily highlighted her small I breasts.

Calmly, cooly, he put his 1 Busch into his back pocket, imI ages of Matt Dillon in Rumble I Fish and the Priest’s Love Bites I screaming through his head like 1 some new, fantastic designer 1 drug; collected all the gremlins of cool he’d invented earlier that

one-two punch here, though, comes from placing the rendition of “The Cannon Song” by exWall Of Voodo vocalist Stan Ridgway fronting the Fowler brothers back to back with Marianne Faithfull’s “Ballad Of The Soldier’s Wife.” Both songs go well beyond basic anti-war day and siddled up to her like I some scared pagan genuflecting I to a stone idol. From the blaster 1 the sound distracted him, if only I for a moment. But what sounds he thought, they were without a 1 doubt metal but weren’t wishy I washy, or wimped-out, they were I cold, hard and hit the mind like I the rush of amyl nitrate. He likI ed it like nothing he’d heard in 1 quite some time. And he hadn’t I the slightest idea of who it was I and because he was COOL and I he knew all the best jams it was I beginning to really bug him.

After what seemed like an I eternity the tape ended. The girls f eyes snapped open and were the ! deep green color of sin. His eyes I still clouded from thinking spoke 1 up, then so did he, “Cash jams, I man!”

“Oh yeah. Who’re you, I dude?” she replied, her voice as I soft and low as the purring of I some great jungle cat padding its I way through a silent, moist an| tidiluvian twilight.

“Uhh...who’s the band... I sounds pretty cash,” he replied, I the courage of teenage surging I through his veins with all the repressions of inadequacy and * rage that were his young soul.

“Oh, uh, they’re called,

sentiments to show that the wages of war are often death for the foot soldier, whether he’s in a successful army or not.

OK, this is coming off kinda like a lunatic rave, but the record’s worth it. Kurt Weill wrote some of the gutsiest, most musical pop of the first half of Husker Du, this is their new ■ record, it’s called, Flip Your Wig, I real cash ain’t it?”

“Ain’t that punk faggot crap?” I “Naw, it used to be called I punk faggot crap and hardcore, I but now we call it metalcore | ’cause that’s a cooler word.”

He stared at her for awhile. I She flipped the tape over, her I eyes never leaving his, advancI ing it a way. “Listen to this,” she I said like the spider to the fly, like I the Lion to the Christian, like the I horny rock critic to his shy date, I “it’s called ‘The Wit And The I Wisdom.’”

I Noise washed over him in I sheer auditory-orgone stimulaI ting delight. And it didn’t stop, 1 even as he turned from the girl I and walked away like some newI ly hipped acolyte in a deep-time I fix of heebie-jeebie awareness, I it just entered his veins and I bivouaced. He heard a low, I mean laugh from behind him as I he made his way out of the gym I and to, to, to the record store to I buy Flip Your Wig by Husker Du. I As he ordered the record he was I seized with the gift of tongues I and knew at last what Husker Du I really meant, it meant, it was * Danish for “do you remember,” and he did, he did.

this century, so it makes sense that many of the more individualistic artists of our own time should appreciate his material enough to record it. Do Sting, Marianne Faithfull, Tom Waits and Lou Reed maybe know something you don’t?

Michael Davis