[Rolling Stone, Sept. 25, 1986]

It's tempting to trumpet Romeo Unchained as the best Bob Dylan album since Dylan himself lost interest in the pop-song form. Tonio K., the exceptional singer, songwriter and guitarist whose long-delayed fourth release this is, resembles Dylan vocally and, like Dylan at his midperiod best, writes rock & roll songs that actually say something. What they say, however, is so distinctively provocative that comparisons can only be misleading. Tonio K. is an arousing original.

Tonio (real name: Steve Krikorian) became a critics' favorite with the release of Life in the Foodchain, his 1979 [sic] debut album. A razor-edged alloy of walloping rock and life-is-shit lyrics, Foodchain was tough stuff÷too tough, perhaps, as massive sales did not ensue. Since his last record, Tonio has, happily, discovered a reason to live: true love—or at least its promise—which it pains him to see subverted at every turn by impossible sex-role expectations and the general emotional trivialization of modern culture. "What happens to people in love is some kind of mystery," he sings in "You Belong with Me." "But what passes for love on the street these days is a joke."

Getting back to love's possibilities—and away from the current "world gone crazy/Where the men won't grow up/And the women get so hard"—is what Romeo Unchained is mostly about, and it's a gripping trip. Tonio's contempt for traditional romantic cant precludes any woozy platitudinizing, and his compositions (bolstered by strong instrumental input from string virtuoso David Mansfield and guitarists Charlie Sexton and T-Bone Burnett) underline the seriousness of his intent.

The way to straighten out all the confusion between the sexes, Tonio contends, is renunciation of socially engineered romantic expectations; every love story has its own script. In the drolly titled "Impressed," he lists the alleged great lovers of history and concludes, "I am not impressed/I love you the best · And we got nothing, nothing to live up to." In the Springsteenish closer, he allows that the path to true love may be uphill all the way, but the view from love's true peaks is unbounded, and "when we get sprung/From out these cages, baby/God knows what we might do."

Although the album's hardest-hitting rocker is a thematically unrelated track called "I Handle Snakes"—a wicked barbecue of religious fundamentalists—Romeo Unchained derives its considerable artistic stature from the sincerity of its romantic concern, as well as the high quality of the music. Hooks abound, borne aloft by rich, meaty rhythm tracks and shrewdly deployed synth riffs and embellished with everything from frantic thrash-guitar leads (on "Living Doll") to free-floating surf flourishes ("You Don't Belong Here"). But while Tonio's eclecticism is exhilarating, it's his determination to address real human issues within the context of rock & roll that compels admiration.

—Kurt Loder