Consumer Guide Album

The Paranoid Style: Rock & Roll Just Can't Recall + 3 [Bar/None, 2018]
Beefed up to eight songs to mark its embrace by a venerable label of indie luminaries from They Might Be Giants to Ezra Furman, this digital-only reissue of a superb self-released 2015 EP is designed to make fresh converts as first responders download the three new ones. As Elizabeth Nelson fans come to realize, how deep the songs are is a trickier call than her command of political rhetoric makes you think--lines like "Are we not men/Are we mere clients" and titles like "Slush Fund City" never quite launch the intellectual content her hard groove and enunciated multisyllables gesture toward. She's a songwriter, folks--let others waste their smarts on letters to the editor with op-ed dreams. Especially since Nelson has just nabbed the rock critic slot at a political blog with the excellent rock and roll moniker Lawyers, Guns and Money. The anti-'60s cracks that animate her enthusiasm for Dylan's Slow Train Coming are enough to make one hope that before too long she gets to sound off about Bernie Sanders. A