Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Sneakers [extended]

  • In the Red [Car EP, 1978] B-
  • Stands for Decibels [I.R.S., 1981] A-
  • Repercussion [Albion, 1982] B+
  • Like This [Bearsville, 1984] A-
  • The Sound of Music [I.R.S., 1987] B
  • It's Alright [A&M, 1987] B
  • Fireworks [RNA, 1991] Dud
  • Mavericks [DNA, 1991] Choice Cuts
  • Travels in the South [Yep Roc, 2004] Choice Cuts
  • Falling Off the Sky [Bar/None, 2012] A-

See Also:

Consumer Guide Reviews:

In the Red [Car EP, 1978]
This specially priced 33-rpm 12-incher contains six songs and three fragments totaling 19 minutes, but it's not an album, exactly. Might be if mastermind Chris Stamey (Alex Chilton vet whose group is now called the dB's) would add the best songs from his various seven-inchers (including the six-song 33-rpm one) my faves are "The Summer Sun" and "If and When". On the other hand, "What I Dig" and "Decline and Fall," which lead off the two sides here, would make a terrific single. Sprung harmony fans, Big Star cultists and other '60s revisionists can make further inquiries. B-

The dB's: Stands for Decibels [I.R.S., 1981]
En Why's own Southern Anglophiles keep their potential for Beatley let-loose and Box Topsy get-down in such close check that their compulsive studiocraft radiates a mad joy all its own. This is pop at its tensest--the precise harmonies, broken rhythms, and Byrdsy zoom effects are drawn so tight they make the expertly rendered romantic ups and downs of the songs sound intense and earned. A-

The dB's: Repercussion [Albion, 1982]
A man of simple tastes, I'm thrown into a tizzy when I find myself uninterested in playing an album comprising twelve tunes I can hum after a dozen plays. I think it's because they're so prepossessing they short-circuit my simple aesthetic sense. I was thrown off for weeks, to take one example, by the soul horns that open the lead cut. They sounded fussy. Soul horns. On a pop record. Overreaching. B+

The dB's: Like This [Bearsville, 1984]
This is a different, less ambitious band without Chris Stamey, whose taste for the uncanny is missed when the lyrics wind down into the enigmatic (nice word for vague, unrealized, etc.) stuff on side two. But Chris Butler's eight-cylinder production suits the straightforward thrust of Peter Holsapple's young-adult love songs, and melodies have never been their problem. A piece of Inspirational Verse, then: "I can understand / Why you want a better man / But why do you wanna make him out of me?" And one request: How about a whole album that kicks like "A Spy in the House of Love"? A-

The dB's: The Sound of Music [I.R.S., 1987]
Yeah it rocks, but when a pop group leaves it at that they're no better than their latest song, and when their sole remaining songwriter is still dissecting serial monogamy as he says bye to thirty, chances are his latest song doesn't even interest him all that much. With Chris Stamey they really had a sound. And with Chris Butler they really had a groove. B

Chris Stamey: It's Alright [A&M, 1987]
After two excessively eccentric solo LPs, Stamey's new wave supersession is excessively conventional, subsuming his mad pop perfectionism and repressed inner turmoil in mere well-madeness. Under the leader's iron thumb, Fier, Lloyd, Easter, Worrell, and the pack push all the right buttons, even the one marked Liftoff, thus transporting those who've been waiting five years for their hero to take them for a ride. B

Chris Stamey: Fireworks [RNA, 1991] Dud

Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey: Mavericks [DNA, 1991]
"I Want to Break Your Heart"; "She Was the One" Choice Cuts

Chris Stamey: Travels in the South [Yep Roc, 2004]
"Spanish Harlem" Choice Cuts

The dB's: Falling Off the Sky [Bar/None, 2012]
Solo or in tandem, neither the easygoing Peter Holsapple nor the lapidary Chris Stamey has put his hand to an album nearly as good as drummer Will Rigby's 2002 Paradoxaholic since Reagan was president. They've sounded stiff, tired, twee. But although it's nice to have Rigby's drive (and his hickster kissoff ditty) dirtying up this reunion, motor problems weren't what sunk H&S's 2009 Here and Now with Jon Wurster in the drum chair. And in 2012, it's like H&S never went away. The difference could be parallel life changes or the luck of the songwriting draw or even what never seems to work in the reunion hustle, pride in the band brand. But it's unmistakable. As ever, Holsapple's songs have more life than Stamey's, with the lead "That Time Is Gone" a song about finality a 25-year-old could get behind that's as rousing as anything in their book. But dreamy Stamey has just as much right to a premonitions-of-death title closer a 15-year-old could get behind. A-