Consumer Guide Album

The Embarrassment: Retrospective [Fresh Sounds, 1984]
Now that I've finally gotten the message, a year and a half after this great lost American band dispersed into the wilds of Wichita, I still can't repeat it back to you. Which may help explain how the band got lost. Even garage-rock isn't a broad enough genre description--the song shapes here are just too ungainly. Their lyrics are too wide-ranging and elusive for modern romance, yet too down-to-earth and just plain funny to get lumped in with the neotrippies. And while the voice of John Nichols, described by annotator Drew Wheeler as belonging to "an All-American adolescent in a state of psycho-sexual confusion," provides a convenient way in, I know that what makes me sit up and say yeah is the kick of Bill Goffrier's rather grungy guitar. You figure it out. A−