Pop Farts

My best woman pal has a theory that worldwide pollution, coupled with the jamming of hormones and antibiotics into beef cattle, has impacted men adversely. It's hit some square in the nuts, she says, bringing on a feminization of sex-linked characteristics—atrophy of the upper arm, widening of the hips, softening of the face, a shapely rounding of the bottom.

Looking at the Androids album cover, it could be true. Even a group pose in front of a wall of speaker cabinets can't fix them. The Androids' power treacle might be treasure for the Disney Channel. But everyone else will roll their eyes at "Do It With Madonna," a wish of the singer that can in no way be believed, given the evidence at hand. Androids tunes often start with a clicking rhythm box, too—a dreadful gimmick that foils even the barrel-scraping bargain price of $9.00.

Also fresh from the nine-buck bin is Damone's From the Attic. RCA's stab at a heavy cover—oh, look at the Marshall stack—starts it off on the wrong foot. One expects brutal explosion, but what one gets is Noelle, a 17-year-old whose weaknesses include not being able to sing and a lack of gracious reticence in public. "One time in my eighth grade science class, I fell asleep and my own fart woke me up," she reveals in promo nose-gold.

The vocals are fixed with multi-layering, but it's hard to squeegee much more from Noelle's wet-carwash-girl-at-the-carwash shtick. The troublesome Lord-Alge is at work, too, adding liters of studio helium to an effort already light on muscle. "At the Mall"—brrrr—is one brief hit: almost like the Sweet, because the guys stop slacking off.