Consumer Guide Album

Boney M.: Take the Heat Off Me [Atco, 1977]
As in so much German disco, a nice tart detachment undercuts the lush vacuousness here. It's not just that the rhythms are candidly mechanical; even the stiffness of the string playing sounds calculated, as if produced by some fantastic cuckoo clock. Who else could put "No Woman, No Cry" and the Peggy Lee version of "Fever" belly-to-belly except some European who thinks that whatever crosses the Atlantic is similarly funky and exotic? B