CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

DEPARTMENTS

AEROSMITH “Done With Mirrors” (Geffen)

Their knack for the basic song and small interest in guitar-hero costume drama always made them hard rock that deserved the name, not to mention an Amercian band. Still, with almost a decade of bad records collective and solo behind them, there was no reason to expect a thing from this touching reunion. And against all odds the old farts light one up: if you can stand the crunch, you’ll find more get-up-and-go on the first side than on any dozen random neogarage EPs.

B +

RUBEN BLADES Y SEIS DEL SOLAR “Escenas” (Elektra)

From loud syndrums to choked-up harmonies to generalized lyric, the Linda Ronstadt duet points up the risk Blades runs of falling into a modernist version of salsa’s romantic overstatement. But the risk has a payback—whether he’s synthing up la melodia or cataloguing international freedom fighters, his ability to skip along the shores of schlock without ruining his best pair of shoes helps distinguish him from middlebrow popularizers. It might even be what makes “The Song Of The End Of The World” a gleeful blowout rather than some stupid satire.

A-

THE COSTELLO SHOW (FEATURING ELVIS COSTELLO) “King Of America” (Columbia)

The Attractions always betokened Elvis’s punk integrity—his commitment to collective creation, his rejection of the International Pop Music Community’s expedient playing around. And the last time they were fully equal to his music was on This Year’s Model in 1978. So finally he ditches them for TBone Burnett and a bunch of studio pros Steve Stills himself could get behind, one set anchored by Elvis l-approved L.A. rockabillies James Burton and Ron Tutt, the other by New Orleans-gone-L.A. drummer Earl Palmer and Modern Jazz-gone-L.A. bassist Ray Brown. And they all collaborate with their paymaster on that incommensurable token of collective creation, a groove. The wordplay is still too private, but the music has opened up: the careworn relaxation of Elvis’s live vocals fits the uncompromised careerism of this groove as simply as 1978’s raging tension did the angry young speed-rock of This Year’s Model. Good show.

A

BY ROBERT CHRISTGAU

“CROSSOVER DREAMS” (Elektra)

Good flick or no, Ruben Blades is subject to the iron law of soundtracks just like crasser mortals, and though salsa atmospherics beat Dave Grusin by me, this one bogs down in reprises, living-room music, and the song Blades’s character sells out with. Nor does featured vocalist Virgilio Marti prove legendary enough to compensate.

B

THE DEL-LORDS “Johnny Comes Marching Home” (EMI America)

By saving “Heaven” for Pat Benatar’s producer they assure its standing as an unmatched distillation of rock ’n’ roll’s utopian thrust. Elsewhere their politics are sentimental and misconceived, with the Pete Seeger reference the giveaway and the bad TV movie “Against My Will” the nadir. Despairing or hopeful, the love songs are more tough-minded. That’s the way it is with rock ’n’ roll’s utopian thrust.

B +

STEVE EARLE “Guitar Town” (MCA)

“I was born in the land of plenty now there ain’t enough.” “I gotta two pack habit and a motel tan.” “I admit I fall in love a lot.” In other words, he’s like 10,000 footloose rock ’n’ rollers before him, only he’s got new ways to say it. Even makes the road seem like a hardship worthy of Scarecrow if not Born In The U.S.A. An American yes, a fool no, and Phil Alvin could do worse than give him a call.

A-

ED GEIN’S CAR “Making Dick Dance” (EGC)

Like any hardcore band with the money, they include a lyric sheet. Unlike most, they don’t need one—their work is admirably recognizable, words and music both. Which doesn’t make it admirable. You can be sure these guys don’t shoot “screwdrive boys”—that’s Bernie Goetz. And they don’t “beat up gays”—that’s their dog. They’re not steamed because they’re “feeding legions of wogs”—that’s some middle-aged protofascist. They wouldn’t rape anybody— that’s the “sick fucker” who’s on the streets because “the courts don’t care.” But they do “want to fuck a girl like you.” Funny fellows. Docked a notch for their taste in personas.

B

GRANDMASTER FLASH “The Source” (Elektra)

Their original-is-still-the-greatest message might seem more original i* they weren’t still using some of the rhymes they introduced back when they and their brother Mel were number one. Imagine Wings getting back at John for “How Do You Sleep?” with a concept album and you’ll have some idea of how thoroughly they waste these beats.

C

ALBERT GRIFFITHS AND THE GLADIATORS “Country Living” (Heartbeat)

There’s nothing progressive and plenty idiosyncratic about Griffiths’s quest for naturality, which is fine—in reggae, idiosyncrasy makes all the marginal difference. The interested will thrill to the sweetness of the gutturals, the placement of the harmonies, the shifting center of the groove. The bored will remain so.

B +

MERLE HAGGARD “A Friend In California” (Epic)

Just when I decide he’s gonna lay back forever he ambles into this. No Nippophobia, minimal love pap, a touch of Mexico, and lots of swing—except for one Freddy Powers pledge it keeps going till the obligatory sentimentality of the last two cuts. But though Merle’s writing is rolling, the prize is Floyd Tillman’s “This Cold War With You.” I vote for a tribute followup.

B +

HUSKER DU “Candy Apple Grey” (Warner Bros.)

Grant Hart breaks up with the love of his life, Bob Mould can’t shake off a bad trip, and hand in hand they sell out to the big bad major with the most disconsolate record of their never exactly cheerful career. Of course, between the swelling melodies that are supposed to give them pop accessibility and an attention to recorded sound that does some justice to their humongous musical details, the overall effect is more inspirational than depressing—this is the album that combines the supersonic soar of Flip Your Wig with the full-grown vision of New Day Rising. As for pop accessibility, we shall see.

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A

AARON NEVILLE “Make Me Strong” (Charly import)

Produced between 1968 and 1975 by Allen Toussaint, every song here stiffed if it got released at all, yet taken together they constitute a classic singer’s album as well as the ideal testament to Toussaint’s spacy romanticism. The unhurried tempos often do without Toussaint’s piano, but Neville’s buttery tenor captures the spirituality that Lee Dorsey’s waggishness obscured and Toussaint’s bare vocal.competence doomed to limbo.

A-

PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION “Parade” (Paisley Park)

Musically, this anything but retro fusion of Fresh’s foundation and Sgt. Pepper’s filigrees is nothing short of amazing. Only the tineared will overlook the unkiltered wit of its pop-baroque inventions, only the leadassed deny its lean, quirky grooves, both of which are so arresting that at first you don’t take in the equally spectacular assurance with which the singer skips from mood to mood and register to register. I just wish the thing weren’t such a damn kaleidoscope: far from unifying its multifarious parts, its soundtrack function destroys what little chance the lyrics have of bringing it together. Christopher is Prince, I guess, but nothing here tempts me to make sure. I’d much rather find out whether the former Rogers Nelson really takes all this trouble just so he can die and/or make love underneath whatever kind of moon, or if he has something less banal in mind.

A-

THE REPLACEMENTS “The Shit Hits The Fans” (Twin/Tone cassette)

This slop bucket of shit-aesthetic covers from Lloyd Price to X with lotsa BTO/Foreigner/Skynyrd in between was “recorded live at the Bowery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 11.11.84" without the band’s knowledge: “our roadie pulled it out of some enterprising young gent’s tape recorder toward the end of the night.” Sound is more than adequate considering, songs mostly good-to-great, overall effect a little conceptual for my tastes. I might want to hear them do “Misty Mountain Hop” twixt “God Damn Job” and “I Will Dare,” but twixt “Iron Man” and “Heartbreaker,” I’ll take Led Zep’s.

B

SADE “Promise” (Portrait)

Even when it’s this sumptuous, there’s a problem with aural wallpaper—once you start paying attention to it, it’s not wallpaper anymore, it’s pictures on the wall. And while as wallpaper these pictures may be something, they can’t compete with the ones you’ve hung up special. That’s why I prefer my aural wallpaper either so richly patterned you can’t see past the whole (Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians) or so intricately worked you can gaze at the details forever (Eno’s Another Green World). In between I’ll take Julie London.

B

BOB SEGER & THE SILVER BULLET BAND “Like A Rock” (Capitol)

The songwriting’s sharper, but he’s not. Whether their focus is personal (“Like A Rock”), social (“Miami”), or personal-associal (“Tightrope”), all his evocations of this rock and that hard place add up to is high-grade soap opera. Between John Robinson’s measured arena beat and Craig Frost’s Bittanesque semiclassicisms, Seger comes on as a world-weary elder statesman, which is to say an incurable cornball. Transcending all this is “The Ring,” the tale of a good marriage that didn’t get it all, and too bad Bruce won’t cover it.

B

VAN HALEN “5150” (Warner Bros.)

Wonder how the guitar mavens who thought Eddie equalled Van Halen are going to like his fireworks displays and balls-to-thewall hooks now that video star David Lee Roth has given way to one of the biggest schmucks in the known biz. No musician with something to say could stomach responding to Sammy Hagar’s call, and this album proves it.

C +

ROBERT WYATT “Old Rottenhat” (Rough Trade import)

Set your political statements to unprepossessingly hypnotic music and you’d better be sure your politics are spot on—astute, clear, epigrammatic, correct. Don’t deploy a slur like “aryan” anachronistically or attribute a phrase of Harold Rosenberg’s to Noam Chomsky. Don’t insult the genocide in East Timor with minimalist obscurantism. Don’t preach to the converted until you’ve made more converts.

B-

DWIGHT YOAKAM “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.” (Reprise)

Even first time around—on the generous indie EP this expands into a skimpy album —his purism was more retreat than reclamation. Add two superfluous covers, a duet with Maria McKee, and a title tune in which all those et ceteras turn out to be “hillbilly music” and you get Ricky Skaggs for sinners.

B

ADDITIONAL CONSUMER NEWS:

Addresses: EGC, 617 46th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220; Heartbeat, One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140; Twin/Tone, 445 Oliver Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55405.