Consumer Guide Album

Stan Ridgway: The Big Heat [I.R.S., 1986]
Greil Marcus argues that the former Wall of Voodoo frontman is "playing with" the American voice Raymond Chandler once described: "flat, toneless and tiresome." Pretty clever, only I don't hear much play. That voice is no creation--it's Ridgway, who shares with Chandler the literary sins of cynicism and literariness. Like a city reporter with a drinking problem or a novelist turned night clerk, Ridgway is a wise guy who isn't as wise as he thinks he is, and while a fair number of these songs have the sleaze-infatuated atmosphere L.A. artists from West to Waits have gone for, only a couple--"Walkin' Home Alone," a song of lost love any asshole would be proud of, and "Pick It Up (And Put It in Your Pocket)," the dirt on Reagonomics--belong in the same paragraph as Raymond Chandler. B