Consumer Guide Album

Marshall Chapman: Dirty Linen [Tall Girl, 1987]
So finally she gives up, living modestly if that off songwriting royalties, and after four or five years self-produces a ten-buck, ten-song tape that gets vinylized in West Germany, the disposable-income capital of the world. Naturally it's her best record by a mile and a half, because she's not trying to prove anything--just putting her songs on the table in front of the perfect little rock and roll groove of her non-name band. The singing is relaxed and aware, the writing sharpest when it means to cut a little, as on "Bad Debt" (rhymes with "You haven't taken out the garbage yet") and "Betty's Bein' Bad ("She's not mad/She's just gettin' even/Betty's bein' bad/It's her way of leavin'"). May she glorify her Pignose amp forever. A−