Kid Creole and the Coconuts: Wise Guy (ZE) **
Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, 5 August 1982
THE TITLE OF this record in the U.K. is Tropical Gangsters, in line with the album's plot, which finds Kid Creole and the Coconuts shipwrecked and marooned for six months on an island where "crime is the only passport and race music the only way out." But the tropical ambiance never quite comes across, and Wise Guy turns out to be a soulless, if competently played, collection of songs that sound suspiciously like disco fodder, especially such aimless exercises as 'I'm Corrupt'.
Total word count of piece: 263
