Tonio K.: Yugoslavia : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

What becomes of rock's most endangered species - the aging cult act? If you don't recall Tonio K., well, you have plenty of company: He is a gifted Southern California wiseass who named himself after a Thomas Mann character and made a splash with a punky apocalyptic number, "The Funky Western Civilization," and the wonderfully barbed 1978 album Life in the Foodchain. In more recent years, he's paid the bills as a songwriter, with songs covered by everyone from Bonnie Raitt to Steve Jones. Yugoslavia - the man's first full-length studio recording in a decade - features Tonio doing what he's always done: commenting on life with a mix of moral seriousness and absurdist glee in a collection of odds and ends that somehow hold together. Longtime Tonio partners in crime such as John Keller, Charlie Sexton and Peter Case help deliver Yugoslavia's fourteen songs of straight-ahead, largely keyboard-driven rock. Tunes like "Student Interview (With the Third-Richest Man in the World)" prove that his biting wit is still intact. But Yugoslavia is strongest when K. allows himself to embrace maturity on tracks like the gentle "I Know a Place" and the road-weary "Home to You." Growing up is always a risky proposition, but it's arguably the best option for a cult hero who dares to keep living. (RS 838)

DAVID WILD