Consumer Guide Album

Fresh Reggae Hits [Pow Wow, 1989]
Here's where the quality begins to thin out--where a novelty-hungry dance audience demands variations on moves so subtle that novelty-hungry outsiders can't even hear them. Though somatic judgments are more subjective than most, Half Pint's "Level the Vibes" leads off, suggesting that a lot of bodies feel it the way mine does--as a dance track from God, not quite "Word Up" or "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," but close. Next two cuts are winningly songful. But it's only on side two, with Sophia George's "Tenement Yard," that I find anything else for my tape. B