Customer Reviews

Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Yes, this version of Christgau's Record Guide is a bit more chaotic, but at least the author admits so in his introduction. The new grading system, although different, doesn't take long to get used to. I found myself whizzing right along after reading Christgau's introduction.

Yes, this book is shorter and less comprehensive than his two previous guides. Is this a fault? Yes and no. If you're already familiar with Christgau's work (I check the Village Voice online once a month to read his Consumer Guide) you'll probably thank him since he's cut away most of the fat and left only lean meat (i.e. the artists truly worth checking out). If, however, you're distraught that some of the bigger artists have been left out, you might want to check out a safer, broader (and, thus, more tepid) record guide such as the one published by Rolling Stone.

Christgau is opinionated (he IS a critic, after all), but I strongly suggest thumbing through this guide at your local bookstore. Look up some of your favorite artists, and if the reviews of those artists are unfavorable or, worse, if you can't even FIND reviews, well, then this book probably isn't for you. However, if your tastes already lean towards Sonic Youth, Lucinda Williams, Sleater-Kinney, and Randy Newman (my fave!) you'll more than likely turn to the Christgau Record Guide as you would your Bible.

This is the third (and by far the worst) volume I've bought from Cristgau, `cause when he writes about things he likes he can be right on the money. A line such as "irony - an excuse for anything and a reason for nothing" is a good example. Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book, and for several reasons.

First of all, he doesn't like any hard rock or heavy metal, so why he even bothers reviewing these genres is beyond me because he has no understanding of them. Truth is, every time he dismisses a band like Alice in Chains, Metallica, or Kyuss, sometimes without so much as an explanation (more on that later), I feel like sending him to a corner and throwing a dunce cap on his head.

He also continues to wildly overrate 90% of all hip-hop and African albums, as well as any Ramones-influenced punk bands and hard rocking female bands (he's nothing if not politically correct). This also holds true for his beloved "Amerindie" artists, as well as for literate (but sometimes boring) singer songwriters such as John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and Lucinda Williams. Meanwhile, "pretentious" artists who actually try to do something new and different (such as Radiohead, Bjork, U2, Flaming Lips, for example) are obnoxiously dismissed.

I could go on about other albums I feel he's dead wrong about (Pearl Jam's "Vs.," Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball," etc) but I'd run out of space. I've also given up trying to figure out why he loves Marshall Crenshaw but doesn't like Crowded House (they seem comparable to me, and I for one prefer Crowded House), especially since he won't tell me. This is because of his awful new rating system, on which simple letter grades are often confusingly replaced by turkey and bomb symbols, or by record symbols along with a list of a few songs. This flawed new system allows Cristgau to be way too lazy. For example, important `90s artists such as Smashing Pumpkins, Blur, Oasis, The Verve (what's he got against Britpop, anyway?), Tori Amos, and Elliott Smith are barely given a mention. Their albums are listed, but with very little or no commentary.

In short, his `70s and `80s album guides were much better - even if he thought Lou Reed's `80s albums were better than Led Zeppelin's '70 albums.

P.S. What's up with the personal attacks, like the ones on Jeff Buckley and Tom Petty?

I've been reading Christgau for 30 years. He's a smart and amusing writer, and is willing to go against the grain. He's famous in critical circles for having dismissed Jimi Hendrix as a mere showboat after The Monterey Pop Festival - an error (which he later admitted), but an understandable one. I can usually count on him to ferret out the hokey stuff so that I don't have to. I share his views exactly on Elvis Costello, for instance ("fatally self-conscious"), and I'll never forget what he once said about Waylon Jennings ("Reminds us that he has balls by singing as though someone were squeezing them"). I wish he weren't such a sucker for world music, much of which, in my opinion, would be dismissed as pablum if it weren't for the exotic veneer. But no one's perfect.

Anyway, the point is not so much whether I agree with his reviews (although that helps), but whether this book works as a consumer guide, which it purports to be. I think that if you're seriously into popular music, Christgau is an essential read, but I've downgraded this particular book because, for one thing, the rating system is far too complicated. It's not that I can't decipher it - it's that I shouldn't have to. It's supposed to be a consumer guide, not a flight manual. His previous guides were more straightforward, and better for it.

Second, like that of his colleague Greil Marcus, Christgau's writing has become increasingly obtuse. It's partly a result of the fact that the better rock critics have joined (or want to join) the ranks of the literary elite and want everyone to know that they can do more than just review Kiss albums. That's a fine thing, they have much to contribute, but it's no excuse for obtuseness, especially in what purports to be a consumer guide, a reference book. When even a literate reader can't make heads or tails of an entry, things have gotten out of hand. It only happens occasionally, but taken together with the overly-complicated rating system, it can be frustrating.

Those criticisms aside, Christgau is, like I said, essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in popular music. Frustrating at times, but never merely bland. Deduct 2 stars for form, but credit 1 back because it's important to keep Christgau's brand of crankiness alive. Four stars.

As a fan of Christgau's earlier consumer guides for albums of the 1970s and 1980s, I was looking forward to this edition chronicling the 1990s. After one hour of trying to read this thing, I threw it down in disgust. This book has to rank as the single most difficult and un-"user-friendly" record guide ever published.

Instead of the earlier, simpler method of reviewing albums with a paragraph and a letter grade, Christgau now includes stars, turkeys, ham, and bomb symbols and often combines them. The result is a confusing, sometimes contradictory mishmash. For example, a record may rate a "C+", but may be supplemented with a bomb or turkey symbol. Or, a record may not get a letter grade, but will instead have one, two, or three stars after it, or have an "N" or a ham symbol. While Christgau explains his new rating system in the introduction, I found myself flipping back to his ratings chart frequently to figure out what he was saying about a particular album.

In addition, it seems that over half the albums listed in the guide get no review at all and instead merely get a symbol. The book is also a lot slimmer and has larger type than previous editions.

Overall, this was very disappointing and frustrating. Not recommended.

I guess it's not too surprising that many readers of this book are disappointed in some of the changes Robert Christgau has initiated, first in his "Consumer Guide" column, and now in this end-of-decade compilation. Christgau has shifted his focus from music that most knowledgeable rock fans had at least heard of, to more obscure sub-genres, to hip hop and to World Music. Trying to expand the musical horizons of his readers is a worthy enough goal, of course, but Christgau, as others have pointed out and he readily admits, is unable or unwilling to go back to square one, two or three for the sake of the reader. He's in medias res way too deep and leaves a lot of us neophytes behind.

Which may be deliberate. There has always been a dangerously smug and smart-alecky side to Christgau. In recent years, he seems to have given in to these tendencies more and more. It's worse than a "hipper than thou" stance: it's more of a leaving- you-and-the-rest-of-the-musical-illiterates in the dust stance.

But then again, I've never really felt that Christgau's "Consumer Guides" were really about the consumer anyway. I suspect that Christgau suffers from some weird compulsion to pronounce judgment on as much product as possible and this capsule review format allows him to achieve that sick end. Which is not to say that I never agree with him (when I know what the hell he's talking about), but I never get the impression that he's listening to music 24 hours a day for my (or any other reader's) benefit.

Which brings up another point, Christgau's experience as a rock critic of the obsessive variety is fundamentally different from yours and mine. Gee, sometimes he goes back and listens to something for a third or fourth time before rating it once and for all. Generous. But basically, music is flying by him at warp speed. Most of us, by contrast, plod along contentedly in our musically limited little worlds. It may not be as exciting: it's not as exhausting either.

BTW most of these capsule reviews are available on the self-described Dean of Rock Critics website. (That would be robertchristgau.com).

Almost everything that made Christgau's 70s and 80s reviews so great - their broad survey, their ferocious pith - is missing here. Even the beautiful simplicity of the famous letter grades is gone. Unless you're in the market for Afro-pop reviews, which take up a self-indulgently large part of this collection, this has little to recommend it.

I kept wondering when Christgau would collapse under the weight of all those cds that were piling up, each screaming, "Grade me!" Looks like it was the '90s that did the dean in. His third consumer guide is frustratingly scattershot, a strange mix of informative reviews and pointless listings. (Honestly, Bob, we didn't need you to tell us that the latest offerings from Bill Clinton's brother, Susanna Hoffs or Sheila E sucked.) This is not to say that his pithy perfection doesn't rise from time to time in some reviews. However, since he now only expounds on stuff he likes (or doesn't like but finds significant), we don't get those brilliant zingers (although I'm sure Carly Simon and Lou Reed are breathing easier!). He does retain his penchant for missing some of the big ones while paying homage to artists who have out-lived their shelf dates. I'm still shaking my head over the fact that he doesn't even list one of the decade's best moments and defining albums - Everything But the Girl's Walking Wounded - and then actually praises Prince's Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic! But then, Christgau always was confounding, and that's half the joy. But half the joy is all we seem to get in the '90s Guide.

The new rating system, with its "turkey," "bomb," and "choice cut" icons, is confusing. The cover looks like Granny's leftover Christmas foil. My first edition is riddled with typos and has what looks like blobs of ink on a few of the pages. And, most disappointing of all, there's no "Core Collection" list, as with the 70s and 80s versions (both also highly recommended). Still, if I had to pick only one record guide from the many titles out there, it wouldn't take long...

Why is Christgau better than even such venerable rock critics as Ken Tucker and Greil Marcus? He thinks and listens harder, for one thing. And in an age when most critics are little more than paid lapdogs for the corporate record industry, he remains immune to what he calls "autohype." (Which, as I interpret it, means "loving" a record because of the artist's public image rather than on its own merits.)

I have been following Christgau's monthly Consumer Guides in The Village Voice since the mid seventies, and I can honestly say that he has broadened my perspective on not only popular music, but politics, race, and sex as well. (Can reading a music criticism make one a better husband/father/citizen? In this case I'd have to say yes.) In short, he is, to quote that dreaded phrase "the thinking person's rock critic," albeit one who also possesses the occasional ability to make you laugh so hard beer shoots out of your nose. (He isn't known as "the king of the pithy one-liner" for nothing!)

Finally, I would take Christgau's own advice when deciding whether or not to purchase this book: Find a copy at a library or book store, and turn to the year-end best-of lists in the back. If at least a few of his higher ranked cds are also among your faves, then purchase immediately. If, on the other hand, you find yourself turning up your nose at most of them, then pass.

After reading Amazon's description of Christgau's latest record review guide, I was expecting a lot of bang for my buck. Instead, it's not only slimmer than either of his previous two volumes (544 pages? Mine's only 396!), it leaves out one of my favorite features of those two books: his "Core Collection" list. In addition, his new rating system is too confusing, as if he stole it from the Penguine Guide to Jazz. In addition to letter grades, now we have symbols representing "bombs," "turkeys," and "neither," whatever that means. I do like one new feature: Christgau's rating of notable songs on otherwise forgettable albums. But after a 10-year wait, I wanted more.

This book is a big disappointment to me and to all Christgau fans I know. Christgau decides that the point of the book is to tell people what to buy, forgetting that the greatest value of its predecessors has always been (as he once said) as a bathroom book. The problem isn't just the convoluted rating system that you won't remember how to interpret after you've put the book down for a week. It's that his preferences have gotten encrusted and made him unreliable. Remember Achtung Baby by U2? I liked it; some people I know think it's one of the great albums of the 1990's. But here, in a book purporting to review all the significant rock albums of the 1990's, he decides it doesn't merit any discussion. He just indicates that he didn't like it, couldn't hear it. (Oh.) Same for Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys; he couldn't be bothered to write anything about it. Evidently his tastes have narrowed and hardened, and he doesn't have the energy to overcome this, which is a disaster for a professional reviewer. Also, the typeface for the book has changed from something reasonably attractive to an awful sans serif font. His least enjoyable book.