THE CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
As always, this month’s Consumer Guide cleans up pre-Christmas business. All those year-end lists I compiled for the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics’Poll reminded me of a few putatively hi-quality elpees I’d done my best to ignore, and this is where I attempt to confront them.
THE GHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
As always, this month’s Consumer Guide cleans up pre-Christmas business. All those year-end lists I compiled for the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics’Poll reminded me of a few putatively hi-quality elpees I’d done my best to ignore, and this is where I attempt to confront them. If some of those listed seem dated, blame it on my distaste for failed competence and recurring critical riddles. Little Feat and Eno and Blue
Magic and Jesse Winchester received my all-too-painstaking attention, and one of them scored, which is what makes it all worthwhile. In the end, however, I did shy away from Jackson Browne. I think he’s a wimp and what else is there to say about him? Just another pretty face? Thomas Chatterton, you died too soon? You like him or you don % and no amount of nastiness from me is going to change it.
Small pickings this month - • the Christmas release was even more compromised than usual. The usual guidelines apply. Grades of B plus or above indicate ascending enthusiasm, B minus and down, descending dismay.
Robert Ellis