Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Consumer Guide Album

New York Dolls: One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This [RoadRunner, 2006]
David Johansen is no longer 24, so this reunion album surprises by revealing the dirty little secret beneath the '70s Dolls' playful pansexuality: religious emotion. Sure they're still into slapstick and noise. But even the orgiastic "We're All in Love" and the comic "Dance Like a Monkey" have metaphysical dimensions. "Dancing on the Lip of a Volcano" is explicitly pagan; "Take a Good Look at My Good Looks" begins "Spirit slumbers in nature and awakens in mind" before asking "So what if this old world is just artifice?" Everywhere Johansen mourns mortality and celebrates contingency in the most searching lyrics of the year--lyrics deepened by how much fun the band is having. A+