Consumer Guide Album

Gregory Isaacs: I.O.U. [RAS, 1989]
Isaacs evolves so slowly that he'll still be catching up with pop history when he's 70, which makes keeping up with him less fun than quality music ought to be. Like Smokey, he's given up on songwriting and production, yet musically he's deeper now than five years ago: when Gussie Clarke tells him to lead with an unskanking soul-ballad groove, he gets into it no questions asked--like he owns it. Politically, however, he's disappeared, and since one of his charms was how naturally he yoked resistance and romance, he falls on just the wrong side of the almost imperceptible margin between the crafty and the generic. Though if Clarke had come up with more sound effects like the warbling electronic cricket hiding in the underbrush of "Report to Me," I'd never think to mention it. B