Acid Bubblegum
"I don't appeal to the masses," Graham Parker sings on "Sharpening Axes" from his new album,Acid Bubblegum, "and they don't appeal to me." This album's very title suggests his deep mistrust of mass success and popular taste in a world where poisons are marketed via cartoon camels, their praises sung by gold-chained gangstas and their dangerous lure lamented by big-haired news anchors. Popular acceptance has barely touched Parker in his 20-year career, but the one-time London pub-rocker remains one of pop music's most cantankerous, most insightful misanthropes--and one of its best singers as well.--Geoffrey Himes