Side 2
Unknown Soldier: Starting side 2 is
"Straight for the Heart" the third single from the album and another killer track.
Anteater: Oh I love that track to death. One of my favorite AOR songs of the late 80's and it has an amazing bassline
Unknown Soldier: The video has that 'ranch aspect' with a guy with the white t-shirt and jeans in the video, that could easily could've been a Richard Marx song
Unknown Soldier: But I always loved this song as it has so much energy to it.
Anteater: Oh right I saw that video a lonnnng time ago. It sucks of course, but oh well
I forget who played the girl in that video
Unknown Soldier: These last three tracks have all been special, but now we enter into the more epic stuff like
"Only the Children"
Anteater: Toto have done songs about disparity before, but this is one of the better ones
Unknown Soldier: Of course and it has an epic feel and I never tire of it.
Anteater: It's not as punchy as 'Straight To The Heart' or 'Stay Away', but the chorus is excellent and yeah it has kind of an epic feel to complement its lyrical theme
Anteater: Its a good lead up to my favorite pair of songs on the album too
Unknown Soldier: Next is
"A Thousand Years" another song that is a favourite of mine as well and we're on the same wavelength here.
Unknown Soldier: It has a beautiful almost dreamy feel to it.
Anteater: It's very dreamy and surreal. I'd go as far as to call it apocalyptic.
Anteater: Because the song reeks lyrically of desolation and uncertainty. It's the first time Toto have ever done a song like this, and it works brilliantly
Unknown Soldier: "These Chains" is the second of that great pair and one of the best Steve Lukather tracks.
Anteater: Another one with Randy Goodrum actually, which is funny because 'Anna' didn't work for you at all
same songwriting pair, different result I suppose
Anteater: It's one of my favorite Toto songs of all time though, as well as one of Jeff Porcaro's best ever drum shuffles
Unknown Soldier: To be fair I never thought of them as a pair, "Anna" sounds like a boring Chicago song to me and well "These Chains" is a very good song.
Anteater: Well, Goodrum is kinda like an unofficial Toto member at this point. He also helped write 'I'll Be Over You" from the last one hahaha
Unknown Soldier: Probably why he doesn't linger in my mind that much.
Unknown Soldier: Final track is
"Home of the Brave" probably the most ambitious track the band had put out since "Hydra"
Anteater: In any case, by the time most listeners have gotten to this point they're probably thinking the band was going to end with a boring ballad or something
Anteater: But they actually close out with one of their best anthems in their whole songwriting history
Unknown Soldier: Also it's the first David Paich vocal on the album amazingly, but of course JW steels the show here as he should on a track like this.
Anteater: Oh yeah, Paich opens up the song
Anteater: You're right though, 'Home Of The Brave' is the most ambitious song they had done in nearly 10 years up until this point
Anteater: Its basically a mini-progressive rock epic
Unknown Soldier: After that snazzy synth intro.
Unknown Soldier: In fact the whole song is a musical display by the band and the song just transforms with that guitar section after the 3.20 point into something more muscular.
Anteater: The whole song is a masterpiece. Easily the best closing song they've ever gone out with.
Anteater: There's even some Yes-styled instrumental tradeoffs about midway through, dueling guitar and synth lines, lots of fun
Unknown Soldier: That muscle guitar sound and you know what I'm talking about here, is always the thing that pumps my blood on these songs and it's one of their best along with the one on "Angel Don't Cry" and of course Journey's "Edge of the Blade". I could listen to these three tracks all day.
Anteater: I find it funny that one of the best "stadium" songs came out at a time that the genre was drying up with most mainstream audiences
Anteater: They should have released it as a full-blown single, length be damned
Unknown Soldier: Well it was kind of wasted but then again some of the really late period AOR material was great, for example that Bad English debut album is one of the best AOR albums imo. Came out just a year later than the Toto album.
Anteater: Oh yeah, '89 was a great year as far as AOR albums were concerned. You also had stuff like Strangeways and that Michael Thompson Band release, so there was plenty of fun to be had
Anteater: In any case,
The Seventh One was Toto's last full blown AOR record as you mentioned in your intro, as well as being the rare case of an album that actually backloaded all of its best material.
Unknown Soldier Finally we should mention it's title track
"The Seventh One" which was only on the Japanese releases of the album.
Anteater: Yeah, I have that one too. It's a good song: a tad repetitive and more of a "let's jam" kind of piece.
Unknown Soldier: Well I never knew it existed until the age of the internet and even now have trouble believing it's a Toto song.
Unknown Soldier: I guess they ran out of time to fit it on the album.
Anteater: Haha, yeah and it's a weird one for Toto
Anteater: I'm guessing nobody in the U.S. got to hear it except that rare person who went out of their way to import it from Japan back then
Unknown Soldier: Those Japanese imports were always the best and being a Cheap Trick nut I had some of their Japanese imports.
Anteater: Most Toto albums never had any kind of bonus material. So I found it interesting that The Seventh One actually had a title track too a few years ago
The Conclusion
Anteater: How do you rate it in comparison to past albums we've gone through so far?
Unknown Soldier: One of their most accomplished along with their debut.
Anteater: Yeah, since I know you didn't like the first half all that much and
Isolation is your favorite of their 80's albums
Unknown Soldier: This is the order that I'd put them in.
Unknown Soldier: 1. Isolation 2. Toto 3. The Seventh One 4. Hydra 5. Toto IV 6. Turn Back 7. Fahrenheit.
Anteater: That's pretty close to my order too
Anteater: In any case, with
The Seventh One, we can say goodbye for the time being to Toto's AOR era and look forward to their less well-known material
Unknown Soldier: But I like
Turn Back better than you, as I think it has great songs but dislike
Fahrenheit quite a bit.
Anteater: it would be a time of many changes and instabilities
Unknown Soldier: Yes next studio album is the Steve Lukather dominated
Kingdom of Desire which I do like, but before that we had the death of Jeff Porcaro and that Jean-Michel geezer from South Africa as their vocalist for live performances.
Unknown Soldier: A word of advice, never have a singer with a French name in your band, they're always crap
Anteater: We might talk a bit more about him in our next review, but we'll save the fun for then