Consumer Guide Album

Peter Gordon: Innocent [FM, 1986]
Gordon's affectless downtown tone sticks in my craw even though I've learned to have fun with it in other versions. But at least his new mewzick isn't deliberately cheesy. It's kitsch, but it's not cheap kitsch, not factitious so-bad-it's-good; in another time, snobs might have branded it middlebrow, meaning dolts like you and me think it has substance. As a here-disco there-jazz everywhere-semiavant soundtrack to life in media central, kind of fun--though more resistant than fun, or mood music, should ever be. B+