Consumer Guide Album

The Paranoid Style: The Paranoid Style Presents: The Interrogator [Bar/None, 2024]
The only songwriter ever to rhyme "Savoy truffle" and "media kerfuffle," Elizabeth Nelson and sidemen who start with her husband Timothy Bracy and here include perfectly suited original dB Peter Holsapple have assembled a sizable catalogue of catchy yet also politically sapient three-minute songs that now fill up seven albums and an EP. Given how brainy Nelson's lyrics are, her light soprano may strike some as insufficiently forceful, but aesthetic force is one thing brains are for, and as Nelson reminds herself, "If you haven't got the temerity then you'd better turn around." Hence one about a charity event called "Are You Loathsome Tonight." Hence "The return of the Molly Maguires/From the '73 panic/To the children's choirs." Hence "Three credits short at Yokel State/She's gonna be a legal aide." Hence "I've spent time in education/I have spent time in jail/I've drunk from the river basin/I have skied in Vail." A