Consumer Guide Album

Van Halen: Fair Warning [Warner Bros., 1981]
Pretty impressive show-off stuff--not just Eddie's latest sound effects, but a few good jokes along with the mean ones and a rhythm section that can handle punk speed emotionally and technically. At times Eddie could even be said to play an expressive--lyrical?--role. Of course, what he's expressing is hard to say. Technocracy putting a patina on cynicism, a critic might say. B-