I've feuded for years with moralists who accused the band of abandoning a lowbrow purity they never claimed in the first place, but this is a lousy record by any standard--the pop, the eclectic, even the arty. That Debbie is writing all the lyrics is only symptomatic--the tragedy is that of an absorptive, synthetic talent trying to find its essence, a doomed project that's doubly disorienting because she's canny enough not to believe in "self-expression" per se. Instead she galumphs about in search of referents, referents she seemed to locate naturally back when she could walk the Bowery without a disguise. C

I've feuded for years with moralists who accused the band of abandoning a lowbrow purity they never claimed in the first place, but this is a lousy record by any standard--the pop, the eclectic, even the arty. That Debbie is writing all the lyrics is only symptomatic--the tragedy is that of an absorptive, synthetic talent trying to find its essence, a doomed project that's doubly disorienting because she's canny enough not to believe in "self-expression" per se. Instead she galumphs about in search of referents, referents she seemed to locate naturally back when she could walk the Bowery without a disguise. C