CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS: “Listen” (Jive):: If you think I enjoy enjoying this epitome of new wave commercialism, this pap beloved of no one but MTV-addled suburbanites (not even NME, ever!)—well, you’re right. I’m not just being campy, either, except insofar as camp means the luxury of surrender to stupidity—in this case to sheer, sensationalistic aural pleasure, whooshes and zooms and sustains and computerized ostinatos and English boys whining about their spaced out, financially secure lot, all held aloft on tunes Mr. Spock could hum and a beat a veejay could dance to.