Christgau’s Consumer Guide: Albums of the ‘90s

Village Voice critic Robert Christgau is one of the most respected writers on rock music in America. He’s also one of the funniest—and sometimes one of the most willfully difficult. He revels in biting one-liners, obscure references and unapologetically political asides. What all this means is that sometimes his reviews are more entertaining than useful, but even when you’re not exactly sure what he’s getting at, you’ll enjoy the struggle. This consumer guide follows on the heels of two previous ones, which covered album releases from the 1970s and 1980s, and while it shares the strengths of the previous editions, it unfortunately introduces a much more complicated rating system; the straight letter-grade approach he used before was much clearer. Still, this book is lots of fun.