A waste of time and talent
Artiste: Keats
Nationality: British (English)
Album: Keats
Year: 1984
Label: Renaissance
Genre: Rock
Tracks
Heaven knows
Tragedy
Fight to win
Walking on ice
How can you walk away
Turn your heart around
Avalanche
Give it up
Ask no questions
Night full of voices
Hollywood heart
Chronological position: Debut, and only album
Familiarity: Only through the work of the Alan Parsons Project
Interesting Factoid: A project within a project! Keats was a short-lived offshoot from the Alan Parsons Project, and only recorded the one album. This one.
Impression: One word: Why?
Best track(s): Heaven knows, How can you walk away, Avalanche (Really, this is the best of a pretty poor bunch)
Worst track(s): Ask no questions, Hollywood heart
Intention: Uh, none, really, since this is their one and only release. I've always meant to listen to it though, and now I have.
Comments: I've always been partial to the music of the Alan Parsons Project, which most people will probably only know from the likes of
Sirius, the instrumental that introduces many a sports event and was recently used before all of the matches in Euro 2012, or the hit
Old and wise, but although I bought this album, more out of curiosity than anything else, I've never really listened to it through. It's the only one they ever put out, and it features members of the APP like Colin Blunstone, Ian Bairnson and David Paton. Now, for what it is, it's good, but I find it so close to the music, style, sound and themes of the parent band that really it might as well be another Alan Parsons Project album. It's even produced and engineered by him! The only thing missing is Eric Woolfson.
It's therefore hard to separate “Keats” out from the other APP output and treat it as an album on its own merits. You sort of begin to wonder why they bothered. The familiar APP beat is there, the usual suspects singing, the crystal-clear and spot-on production courtesy of Parsons himself, and even the song titles bear resemblances to APP tracks, but unfortunately there's something missing; none of the songs have the immediacy or heart of the material by the Alan Parsons Project, and
Ask no questions is a particular example, just annoying: bouncy and happy without much real substance. Worse though is the closer,
Hollywood heart, where the ex-APP guys try to do soul, and not very well it has to be said.
There's no doubting the individual talents of these people: we've seen them prove themselves time and again on albums like “Eye in the sky”, “Pyramid” and “Ammonia Avenue”. I'm just not that sure why they decided to go in this direction, a decision which it seems was soon abandoned, and probably just as well.