Consumer Guide Album

Peter Gordon: Brooklyn [FM, 1987]
On side two he's up to his usual tricks if not regressing a bit--first three cuts no better than the schlocky instrumental disco-rock they postmodernize, last cut no better than the pretty kora exotica it exploits (which if you're following means it's literally pretty--very, in fact). But side one, how about that, has real words--which are, it took me months to accept this, evocative ("Brooklyn"), romantic ("'Til We Drop"), and funny ("Red Meat"). In an oblique way, but Gordon's problem isn't that he's oblique, it's that he's too oblique. The right dose of oblique can be tonic in this crash-boom world. B+