Consumer Guide Album

The Raspberries: Raspberries [Capitol, 1972]
A clever label on the shrink-wrap smells the way people who make stickum labels think raspberries should smell, and the clever music inside sounds the way people who make stickum music think the Raspberries should sound--that is, the way people who go to music school think the Beatles should have sounded, with rough edges elided and lots of Chopinesque white-album flourishes. Worse still, the conservatory-trained goo lovers are apparently the Raspberries themselves. "Go All the Way" does so, and better pop-tight than country-tight, but not that much better. C+