by Nicole Arthur, Washington Post, May 25, 1993
The Pursuit of Happiness may have gained fame with the 1986 single "I'm an Adult Now," but the Canadian group doesn't exactly traffic in the mores of maturity. Indeed, Thursday night's show at the 9:30 club found unabashedly sophomoric singer-songwriter Moe Berg defending the fact that sex is his sole lyrical concern. As well he might, since Pursuit's most effective songs were those that are frankly adolescent ("I'm Ashamed of Myself," a paean to irresolvable lust), while its worst (the insipid "Pressing Lips") attempted a gushily unconvincing emotionalism.
Like the band's third album "The Downward Road," the show opened with a sample from the Staple Singers' song of the same name. But the self-conscious soul reference is a misleading one - Pursuit's sugary power-chord heavy sound draws almost exclusively from the catalogue of '70's hard rock cliches. "Forbidden Fruit," one of many Berg compositions about infidelity, played like an homage to Deep Purple. But the tributes didn't stop there: the band's drawn-out finale included segues into every air guitar classic from "London Calling" to "Enter Sandman."
© 1993 The Washington Post Company