The Books

  • Books
  • Expertise (UK Logo) 1980 

Singer/synthesist/songsmith Stephen Betts uses the middle initials “F.X.,” and quirky electronic effects are predictably rife on this well-produced (by Colin Thurston) batch of hollow numbers that have substantially more flash than substance. The band plays well in a vaguely modern way, but with none of the originality or talent that characterizes Thurston’s success story, Duran Duran. Betts sings like a right poseur, and his songs don’t even steal enough from others to resemble anything in particular. Intensely second-rate.

[Ira Robbins]