Consumer Guide Album

Elliott Murphy: Lost Generation [RCA Victor, 1975]
The mistake is Paul Rothschild's production, too tasty and anonymous to support the innocence that made Murphy's basically tinny voice and underachieved rock and roll convincing. Deprived of the benefit of the doubt, Murphy's awkward literaryness starts to stick out. You wonder whether his lost generation was really shaped with a "technicolor carving knife." You wonder just how much he knows about Eva Braun. You wonder why the two strongest cuts on the record--the love songs on side one--are the ones you notice last. And in the end you hope the next record makes it. B