Consumer Guide Album

Pylon: Gyrate [DB, 1980]
Vanessa Ellison's bellowed admonitions, Randy Bewley's guitar gradients, Michael Lachowski's peripatetic bass, and Curtis Crowe's prodigious roundhouse drumming add up to an unmistakable sound. I'm impressed. But I wish they'd come up with a few more riffs/melodies as deliberate and haunting as those of "Volume" and "Stop It" and the foolishly omitted "Cool." And while I admire their bare-boned lyrical concept, often the unpretentiousness seems mannered, like some comp-lit cross between Robbe-Grillet and Ted Berrigan. B+