Consumer Guide Album

Kid Creole and the Coconuts: Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places [Sire/ZE, 1981]
When August Darnell kicks off his Caribbean extravaganza with a Foreigner power chord, or the Coconuts sing the I-Threes behind Andy Hernandez, or a JB riff sneaks into a tune called "Table Manners," I'm convinced that both words and music are witty enough to stand. But overwhelmed I'm not. Darnell's pastiche just isn't Stoney Browder's synthesis, and his campy sprechgesang just isn't Cory Daye's babes-on-Broadway razzmatazz. In short, his polyglot musical conception never gets the kind of translation that delves below the signifier. A-