Consumer Guide Album

The Bangles: Greatest Hits [Columbia, 1990]
Catchier cut for cut than All Over the Place, this is also the sad testament of good girls gone bad in the El Lay moneypits. Launched by Susanna Hoffs's and Vicki Peterson's "Hero Takes a Fall," "Going Down to Liverpool" to "Manic Monday" to "If She Knew What She Wants" to "Walk Like an Egyptian" is one of those euphoric pop sequences that makes you believe this can go on forever--this happiness, this knowledge, this being 26, this crest of the wave. Problem is, they didn't write a one of those songs. Culled for dross, the self-penned stuff that follows reaches with some success for the mature self-awareness that is the current El Lay currency, and not a one sounds as fresh or as wise as Paul Simon's "Hazy Shade of Winter." A-