Consumer Guide Album

The Long Ryders: State of Our Union [Island, 1985]
"Looking for Lewis and Clark" is some anthem, but like "Start Me Up" it may reveal more than it intends. These guys seek the explorers rather than the wilderness for the same reason they name Gram Parsons and Tim Hardin as forefathers, rather than Hank and Lefty. The self-conscious distance may be healthy--whatever drove Parsons and Hardin to their roots also turned them into dead junkies. But it's got to cut into the immediacy of the music, and for all the informed intelligence of songs like their tribute to black Memphis superstation WDIA, the album does come to a point at "State of My Union," which aggravates the honest chauvinism of Ronnie Van Zant's reflections on the same subject with the gratuitous self-righteousness of Neil Young's. B+