CONSUMER GUIDE

CONSUMER GUIDE

Robert Christgau

by

THE DEAD MILKMEN Bucky Fellini (Enigma)

Just like Howard Stern says, it’s tough being funny every time out, but at least they’re in there pitching, hurling sophomoric knuckleballs at every freshman in sight. Though they’ve picked up some sarcasm at the feet of Camper Van, pop gothic remains their thing, from the ’60s to Graceland to exploitation flicks to Anglodisco “art fags,” an epithet Mark Knopfler will find hilarious all the way to the bank. B-

ORNETTE COLEMAN In All Languages (Caravan Of Dreams)

Packed by their eternal leader into 10 cuts averaging 3:22, Cherry-Haden-Higgins surge hotter at 50 than they ever dreamed old or new, as if harmolodic funk is an essentially structural principle, inhering more in the constraints of song conception than in the electric pulse. It’s the Quartet disc that evokes the dense flow of Of Human Feelings, which leaves Prime Time room for patches of free cacophony as daunting as the Quartet in its youth. Defining both bands is the natural iconoclasm and indefatigable lyricism of the 57-year-old rebel who’s probably the most widely respected musician in the world, and who somehow doesn’t get any less amazing as a result. A

THE CURE Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (Elektra)

Samey samey Samey is the strategy— repeat repeat repeat repeat the same fourbar theme for 16, 24, 48, 64 bars before

Robert Smith starts to whine, wail, warble, work. Because Smith hasn’t veered this far pop since he was a boy, most of the themes stick with you, and in a few cases—my pick is “Just Like Heaven,” which gets off to a relatively quick start—his romantic vagaries have universal potential. But especially over a double album, the strategy gets pretty tedious unless Smith happens to be whining, wailing, warbling or working to you. B

MARIANNE FAITH FULL Strange Weather (Island)

Scornful of the notion that realism entered pop music with rock ’n’ roll (a/k/a “the blues”), Hal Willner introduces Faithfull to a world-weary band of Lou Reed/ Tom Waits sessioneers and hopes everbody’ll like the same songs he does—by Leadbelly and Henry Glover, by Dylan and Jagger-Richards, but also by Kern and Dubin-Warren. The result can rightfully be called rock Billie Holiday. Faithfull’s nicotine-cured voice serves the material instead of triumphing over it; its musicality equals its interpretive intelligence. Just because she’s jaded doesn’t mean she can’t be a little wise. A-

GRATEFUL DEAD In The Dark (Arista)

Despite the hooks, highlighted unnaturally by do-or-die production, this is definitely the Dead, not Journey or Starship. But only “When Push Comes To Shove,” a ruminative catalogue of paranoid images that add up to one middle-aged man’s fear of love, shows up the young ignorami and old fools who’ve lambasted them as symbols of hippie complacency since the ’60s

were over. One problem with the cosmic is that it doesn’t last forever. C +

GO-BETWEENS Tallulah (Big Time)

They stick to what they know, and their knowledge increases. The quartet’s a quintet now, up one violin, which may not seem like much but does serve to reinforce the hooks that have never been a strength of their understated, ever more explicit tales from the bourgeois fringe. So though I was pulled in by “The Clarke Sisters”—“They sleep in the back of a feminist bookstore”—I soon got involved with every song on the album, with a special rush for “Right Here,” where Robert Forster or Grant McLennan, I still don’t know who’s who, stands by his woman. A-

WHITNEY HOUSTON Whitney (Arista)

It takes more than unsullied venality and the will to power to reign as the most revolting singer in Christendom. It takes active aesthetic miscalculation and, truth be told, more than a little luck. Like falling into the lame dance grooves of Jermaine Jackson and the odious mega-schlock of Michael Masser, with Narada Michael Walden limited to “How Will I Know”—which becomes your breakthrough song as well as the only critically forgivable thing on your best-selling debut album in history. So this time Walden gets seven shots, with Masser down to two and Jermaine returned to the bosom of his family, and the results are forgivable—she does have a pretty good voice, you know. C +

MEAT PUPPETS Mirage (SST)

At their most unhinged these space potatoes always had the charm of true seekers. Who cared if they were soft in the head—their tentative lyricism conveyed the sense of endless discovery that’s the great blessing of soft-headedness. This time, they’ve found what they were looking for, and it’s hard to believe it took them so long. C +

R.E.M. Dead Letter Office (IRS.)

Peter Buck describes these B sides and outtakes as “a junkshop.” Dumpster would be more like it. You can throw away a Velvets cover or three without anybody getting hurt, but bad Pylon gives unsuspecting young people the wrong idea. C +

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SONIC YOUTH Sister (SST)

Finally, an album worthy of their tuning system, and no, it’s not like they’ve suddenly started to write tight or see a shrink. All they cop to is making their bullshit signify, which means keeping a distance from the insanity they find so sexy and not letting their slack-jawed musings drone on too long. Hence, those with more moderate tastes have space to feel the buzz and a chance to go on to something else before boredom sets in. With the California punk cover acknowledging their debts and the bow to coherent content safeguarding

against that empty feeling, their chief pleasure, as always, is formal—a guitar sound almost unique in its capacity to evoke rock ’n’ roll without implicating them in a history few youngish bands can bear up under these days. A

SUZANNE VEGA Solitude Standing (A&M)

I bet “Luka” is a grand fluke like “You’re So Vain” rather than a dawning of the light like “Mrs. Robinson.” Better her closely observed recent songs than a tale of brave Ulysses or a lover with “hands of raining water” (wet yes, hot no). But close observation is still Creative Writing, and if Vega eventually graduates to, say, the flat command of Ann Beattie, she’ll still be precisely nowhere. Real pop lyrics ignore such strictly literary alternatives altogether.C +

TOM VERLAINE Flash Light (I.R.S.)

Supremely self-conscious, utterly unschooled, Verlaine writes like nobody else, sings like nobody else, plays guitar like nobody else. His lyrics sound like his voice sounds like his guitar, laconic and extravagant at the same time. After three years off the boards, he’s deemphasized keyboards in a quest for dynamite riffs, and he’s found enough to thrill any fan. As usual, I’m not sure just what the songs mean. But that bothers me a little, mostly because it may bother you. A-