Consumer Guide Album

John Hiatt: Slow Turning [A&M, 1988]
Cut with his road band rather than a select cast of studio heavies, which probably took some pressure off a perpetual comer who turns the juice up too high when he gets nervous. Anyway, the high-grade country fodder--"Is Anybody There?" to a woman who loves him, "Georgia Rae" to a newborn daughter, and so forth--goes down easier. And the mean stuff he's always been best at--a roving couple who shoot up an automatic teller for laundromat change, a roving couple who steal one of Elvis's Cadillacs, a guy who cheats the world just like his daddy did--has a properly rowdy edge. B+