CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
“THE BEAT": (Columbia) :: In which the Ramones clean up their act and/or the Knack stop smirking. Very nice boys, very intense, 12 songs in half an hour, never stop, drive all over the place, aren’t coming home tonight, wanna find a rock and roll girl, don’t fit in (but will).
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Robert Christgau
“THE BEAT": (Columbia) :: In which the Ramones clean up their act and/or the Knack stop smirking. Very nice boys, very intense, 12 songs in half an hour, never stop, drive all over the place, aren’t coming home tonight, wanna find a rock and roll girl, don’t fit in (but will). B+ BLONDIE: “Eat to the Beat” (Chrysalis) :: This makes it in the end, but not by much—a tour de force like Parallel Lines it ain’t. The soft focus of the lyrics remains more evasive than profound or mysterious, and a lot of what replaces the diminished popcraft either wanders (“Sound-ASleep”) or repeats experiments we’ve - heard before (“Victor”). Then again, “Sound-A-Sleep” probably ought to wander, since it’s about insomnia, and the pushy organ hysterics of “Victor” are a gutsy move for a group that’s supposed to have gone AOR. I don’t like the over-arching fatalism—me, I hope to die old and get ugly—but I do like^the way the lyrics depart from pop bohemia to speak directly to the mass audience they’re reaching. And Debbie just keeps getting better. A-