CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
What’s made him the decade’s premiere country star artistically has been his disinclination to act like one—he’s never climbed on the Nashville assembly line like Skaggs and Strait and so many smaller fry. Until now. He goes for George’s intensity rather than Merle’s hang-loose, but he won’t convince you he thought these songs were special, and though this may mean the truth is still in him, don’t bet on it—not after he yanked the difficult-to-program album he’s got in the can.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
BY ROBERT CHRISTGAU
JOHN ANDERSON “Countrified”
(Warner Bros.)
What’s made him the decade’s premiere country star artistically has been his disinclination to act like one—he’s never climbed on the Nashville assembly line like Skaggs and Strait and so many smaller fry. Until now. He goes for George’s intensity rather than Merle’s hang-loose, but he won’t convince you he thought these songs were special, and though this may mean the truth is still in him, don’t bet on it—not after he yanked the difficult-to-program album he’s got in the can. And just in case country radio isn’t mollified, he provides a gratuitous cover of Merle’s “Fightin’ Side Of Me.” In the Vietnam era, jingoistic trash at least made sense on its own neurotic terms. Who’s he gonna beat up on in 1986? CISPES? Alexander Cockburn? B-
THE B-52’s
“Bouncing Off The Satellites” (Warner Bros.)