Avengers

• Avengers [CD, 1983] B

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Avengers [CD, 1983]
These fourteen cuts constitute the recorded output of a late-'70s San Fran punk band best remembered for "We Are the One," the finest U.S. indie single of 1977, and a 1979 Steve Jones-produced EP. The notes extol their "breakthrough--however brief--into a vision of life expressing firsthand passion and revolt," but to me Penelope Houston sounds like a valley girl with too much attitude. If her "We are not Jesus (Christ!)/We are not fascist (pigs!)/We are not capitalist (industrialists!)/We are not communists" confounded cant on the single, over the long haul her antipolitical railing, lapsed-Catholic obsessions, and assertions of self-sufficiency protest too much. And I wish she knew she was singing flat. B