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Anteater · 02-20-2015, 11:38 PM

Chris Rainbow - White Trails (1979)

"Everybody wants tomorrow / Nobody likes today.."

Before becoming one of the key frontmen for The Alan Parsons Project at the beginning of the 80's, Scotland-based singer/songwriter Christopher James Harley, AKA Chris Rainbow, crafted three solo endeavors that took the best ideas and production flairs of The Beach Boys and integrated them into his own proggy, yacht rocking musical sensibilities...with ridiculously good, awe-inspiring results often sprouting up all over.

Of those three masterpieces, third and final 1979 solo release White Trails is the closest sonically to a literal yacht-rock album: it has the lush, larger-than-life atmosphere of his 1978 sophomore experiment Looking Over My Shoulder, but with stronger hooks and deeper grooves than the more splintered 1975 debut Home Of The Brave. The supporting cast is pretty impressive too: big names include future Toto drummer Simon Phillips and the ever-prolific Manfred Mann Earth Band frontman Chris Thompson on backing vox. Their talents, of course, are on full display throughout this gorgeous album.

This is one of those rare cases where the standouts are going to vary wildly from listener to listener: for me the late night groove of 'Love You Eternally', with its punchy verses and shimmering backing ooh's and aahs, and the jazzy waltzing title track are pure perfection. Throw in the colossal ambience of closing cut 'In Love With Love' or the snarky shuffle of 'Street Wise' and you've got a recipe that hits the spot in more ways than one. Even the stuff that isn't instant classic material has something interesting going on, such as the acoustic, vaguely Yes-ish 'Song Of The Earth' and the starstruck balldeering of 'Don't Take The Night Away'. Eight tracks just fly by like nothing on an album like this I suppose.

All that being said, Chris Rainbow's connections to the yacht rock world of L.A. are almost all second degree: he would later work with Jon Anderson on some of his solo material, who would then later hire the guys in Toto to be part of his backing band on 1988's In The City Of Angels. The real connection, therefore, is mostly aesthetic: this is the sort of quality beach tuneage that Brian Wilson would have been cooking up if things hadn't turned so sour for the surfer boys from Cali after the early 70's. Perhaps it could even be argued that Chris actually surpassed Wilson as an architect of atmosphere by this point in the game, though that's just me being indignant in regards to the lack of exposure and overall acclaim Rainbow got during his heyday.

At the very least, what we have here sounds more like a true successor to the Boys' more adventurous peak era than Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue (R.I.P.), and makes for some great yacht soundtracking to boot. I honestly can't recommend it enough!