Consumer Guide Album

Linton Kwesi Johnson: Tings An' Times [Shanachie, 1991]
A concept album about political fatigue, a theme the man understands deeply and cogently and aphoristically and colloquially and polysyllabically. Johnson always talks, never sings, but his assumed patois is like Leonard Cohen with funkentelechy--the speech of his people is music to his ears, and the music of his people is manna. So the riddims skip by on Dennis Bovell's ska-speedy tempos, graced with tricky guitar hooks and colored with fiddle and accordion that sing Hungary and Algeria and Colombia and the Rio Grande as Johnson "consider how young rebels get old." "Sense Outa Nansense" is a homily about innocents and fools played out as an animal fable, its punch line not words but a regretfully disparaging click of the tongue. "Story" gets behind black masks. "Tings an' Times" starts "Beat doped demoralized/Dizzied dazed and traumatized" and goes on from there. "Di Good Life" utters the name of socialism--"Some say him is a ghost/Some say him is a sage/But nobody know him rightfully yet/Or where him come from." "Di Anfinish Revalueshan" somehow finds hope in confusion and compromise. And in "Mi Revalueshanary Fren," Linton tries to reason with an old Marxist about glasnost. Problem is, the Marxist has wigged out--all the reason is on Linton's side. Analysis, analysis, who's got the analysis? Surely not a reggae man? A