Consumer Guide Album

The Golden Palominos: Visions of Excess [Celluloid, 1985]
As formal experiments go, this packs quite a wallop, and not just because a drummer supervised the mix--Anton Fier clearly loves and understands that much-mocked arena-rock megawattage. But a formal experiment it remains, because neither guitars not voices carry meaning of their own. Jody Harris has always had a weakness for the genre exercise (as has Mike Hampton, for that matter), and the five stellar singer-lyricists sound like they were brought in to finish the tracks. Even in arena-rock that's not how it's done. B+