MR. MUSIC HEAD

Adrian Belew mostly does away with his compositional and productional quirks in order to make a more accessible pop album, but he sadly also mostly does away with the songwriting talent which he demonstrated on previous recordings and which would certainly be required to make such an undertaking a success. For my money, the only good song on here is "1967", a very well-crafted multi-part pop suite that sounds like a mutated Beatles pastiche (that's a compliment). "Oh Daddy" has some charm to it and there are a few tracks with a quasi-industrial feel to it and at least somewhat stand out for that reason (even if they don't really rouse me either) but everything else just puts me to sleep.