Consumer Guide Album

Moe Tucker: Life in Exile After Abdication [50 Skadillion Watts, 1989]
The illusion of commercial potential that induced the Velvets to tighten up without squelching their experimental impulses can't be sustained by any Moe smart enough to have come this far, and so, encouraged by her loony Half Japanese bandmates, she wastes valuable minutes fucking around. Songs meander, her third "Bo Diddley" in three albums still doesn't get it, the endless instrumental is Sonic Youth in runny jam mode. Except for the jam, it's all nice enough--Tucker's modest middle-aged housewife is an innovation in much the way her drumming once was. But "Work," "Spam Again," and "Hey Mersh!" are Amerindie knockouts, lived postpunk takes on the grind and release of lower-middle class adulthood, a subject rock and rollers usually leave to Nashville company men. Somebody try and make a hit out of this woman. B+