Consumer Guide Album

Trotsky Icepick: Baby [SST, 1988]
Thanks be to Kjehl Johansen's riffbook and Vitus Matare's cool-to-be-kind sarcasm, they're catchier than "Don't Buy It"'s "Don't buy anything rancid/Don't buy gifts for Christmas/Don't buy what plays on the radio" or "Bury Manilow"'s "I love all the latest popsongs/These hooks really mess my mind" suggest they want to be. Evoke their real-life needs and anxieties quite cunningly, in fact. And are at their most interesting (and catchiest) dissing consumerism and Barry Manilow. B+