Consumer Guide Album

Richard Hell: Destiny Street [Red Star, 1982]
With Material's Fred Maher replacing Voidoid-turned-Ramone Marky Bell and engineer-bandleader Naux augmenting Robert Quine on guitar, this is no lowest-common-denominator job: it's fuller and jazzier than Blank Generation without any loss of concision. Or toon appeal--the dissonantly dissident fun includes the antiscene "Lowest Common Denominator" and the antiscag "Ignore That Door." These days the poète maudit manqué who once equated private sex with Faustian sin is looking for love that doesn't come in spurts. The key is "Staring in Her Eyes," where he explicitly surrenders his narcissistic nihilism to achieve the bliss described in the title. The song is affecting, its lyricism intensified as usual by the yearning inexactitude with which Hell pursues its melody, and I sympathize in principle with his new head. I'm just not convinced he has his heart in it yet. A−