Consumer Guide Album

Andy Fairweather Low: Spider Jiving [A&M, 1974]
In which the voice of (ta-ra) the Amen Corner rocks more convincingly than he ever did as an English-r&b teen throb and still somehow sounds laid-back. The secret is a rough-hewn spontaneity in which the guitar and bass that meet the Memphis Horns over an insistent but very unfunky 4/4 are both acoustic, in which Charlie McCoy plays hornpipe harp over oompah drums. The lean, direct, catchy, introspective lyrics work the same way; their substance--that is, their obsessive but unassuming speculation about man's fate--is bound up in their free use of verbatim borrowings from a common language. Apotheosis: the slyly hermeneutic "Dancing in the Dark," in which a discreet fatalism is shaped by courtly music-hall tune and elegant soft-shoe timing. A