by Mark Deming David Johansen's self-titled solo debut bears a closer resemblance to his work with the New York Dollsthan any of his subsequent recordings, but the former
Dolls singer cleverly crafted an album that played to his former band's strengths while establishing an identity of his own and delivering a set of tight but powerful hard rock. Where the
Dolls were frequently sloppy and poorly focused (if often gloriously so), David Johansen rocks with a cleaner but equally emphatic guitar attack (courtesyJohnny Rao and Thomas Trask), while Johansen's vocals are noticeably more powerful and sharper than his earlier music. Johansen's songs are more straightforward and less campy than his Dolls tunes; while "Funky But Chic" would have done his old glam buddies proud ("Mama says I look fruity, but in jeans I feel rotten"), the celebration of the fair sex in "Girls" and "I'm A Lover" cuts his former sexual ambiguity to the quick, and the tough rock and roll good times of "Cool Metro" and the girl-troubl