Consumer Guide Album

Nils Lofgren: I Came to Dance [A&M, 1977]
In which the aging prodigy flirts with hackdom and almost scores. He still makes killer licks sound easy, although the melodies are drying up fast, and despite an ominous piece of Inspirational Verse--"I'll play guitar all night and day, just don't ask me to think"--and a road song that sounds like the first of a series, there's more ambitious lyric-writing here than on either of the two previous A&M LPs. Thing is, except for "Happy Ending Kids" and a sly ditty about eating pussy, the lyrics don't work; whether "Jealous Gun" is straight anti-hunting propaganda or an allegory about who knows what, its language is stillborn and its pretensions annoying. C