Hitting rock bottom

Staff writer Phil Davis tunes his ear back toward 1986 pop music and hears "a pretty terrible year for rock radio." Amid the crap, he finds a short list of strong albums, including Blood and Chocolate by Elvis Costello & The Attractions, with its "nasty, aggressive songs of vengeance, treachery and regret"; Paul Simon's buoyant Graceland; Wine Colored Roses by George Jones, whose "singing is as full of thrilling heartache and remorse as ever"; Peter Gabriel's So, "filled with compassion and experimental pop ideas that are made to sound familiar"; and Big Black's Atomizer, which Davis likens to "peering into the fevered brain of an angry punk and watching the gray, grimy gears slowly, brutally grind away." Davis adds that local artists such as E*I*E*I*O, his own band Fire Town, the Rousers, Killdozer, Ivory Library and Peter & Lou Berryman "all released remarkable, national-quality works."