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Old 10-20-2021, 01:30 PM   #36 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Eve (1979)

One thing the Alan Parsons Project have always done well is concepts, and differently to other bands, especially prog ones. Rather than, as is usual, write a story and then music to link the various parts of it (think anything from The Wall to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Rush's seminal first side of 2112) they tended to develop a concept and then write songs which were loosely tied in to that theme, but didn't necessarily follow it as a story line. Check for instance the last-but-one album, I Robot, which touches on the inherent danger in giving too much power to machines, or their final album as a band, Gaudi, based around the life of the Spanish architect. There are always songs that refer to the theme, but then there are others that seem to bear no real resemblance to it, more I guess Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (Iron Maiden) than Misplaced Childhood (Marillion).

Here though, the concept seems to follow through pretty much all of the tracks, which isn't that terribly hard, as Eve is based around the theme, once espoused by Tammy Wynette, that sometimes it's hard to be a woman. It looks at the different challenges women face, from men, from other women and from the world at large, and in ways it can be seen almost as a link to the previous album, with its references to the Bible, Genesis and the creation of beings.

Like that album, this one begins with an instrumental, and you're in no doubt what the theme is when an album called Eve opens with a track called “Lucifer”. It comes in slowly, fading in with ambient sounds, Morse code which apparently taps out two letters, E and V (with another E on the end – EVE, geddit?) then the rhythm slowly comes up, bopping along in a typical APP melody, holow, boucning, rumbling drumbeats and jangly guitar joined by high-pitched keyboard, almost tubular bells in one way. It says this was a big hit on the dance floors of Europe, and I can see why, though I doubt anyone dancing to it had the faintest clue what band it was. Almost, but not quite, trance before trance was a thing. It's a long instrumental, just over five minutes, and it leads into “You Lie Down With Dogs”, which is the kind of song that could only be sung really by Lenny Zakatek, and so it is he who takes vocal duties.

It's a bitter, harsh little song, quite misogynistic in tone, meant, I assume, to demonstrate how some men treat women as little more than their property, and how some women have to go to extremes to survive. Laconic guitar from Ian Bairnson gets it going before the song takes a sort of funky left turn, with a humming bass line from David Paton. I'm going to stick my neck out and imagine the woman in this song is a prostitute, and given that the singer is then one of her clients it's a little rich that he tells her ”You lie down with dogs/ You get up with thieves.” Intentionally, of course, the man comes off as the worse of the two parties in this exchange, as he berates the woman he's paying for sex for having chosen, or been pushed into this lifestyle. I like the guitar solo and the slightly processed backing vocal is very effective too.

There's no let up for the poor woman in “I'd Rather Be a Man”, as she continues to get harassed about her gender. Hypnotic little bass line here and a galloping guitar riff which again showcases the kind of sound we would hear from the Alan Parsons Project over the years. It's in fact Paton who takes the vocal on this one, as he will from time to time, and he delivers a fine performance. More references to the Bible when he sings ”Blame it on the apple tree/ But you don't fool me.” The climbing keyboard arpeggios are great here and build to a real crescendo as the song hurtles along, with another abrupt ending into the first of two ballads, Dave Townsend this time behind the mike. Much softer and gentle, and in essence a love song, “You Won't Be There” nevertheless has a sting in its tale, as the singer accuses his lover ”Just when I need you/ You won't be there.”. Driven very much on piano with Andrew Powell's orchestral arrangement really coming into its own here.

Bairnson's guitar is quite restrained, even when he slips into an expressive solo, and the bridge at the end is really excellent, and it's the third consecutive track on the album to end abruptly, though it does segue almost directly from an orchestral ending into a winding clock sound and sort of musical box effect which opens the faster “Winding Me Up”, giving me a sense of Chris De Burgh circa Eastern Wind. Quite AOR and you could imagine it being a single. Vocals this time are taken by Chris Rainbow with some good backing vocals too, and almost a flute solo, though presumably synthesised (maybe not; there is an orchestra involved, after all) joined by Bairnson's guitar and then what sounds like violin and flute accompanying rippling piano. And yet again it's a short, sharp ending.

A kind of almost video-game synthy introduction to “Damned if I Do” before the familiar “Parsons March”, as I call it, pounds in and we have again Lenny Zakatek on the vocals, another uptempo song with a great hook in it and a sort of parping bass line running through the melody. A beautiful, sumptuous orchestral piece in the midsection which gives way to a sharp guitar solo from Bairnson, this the first track on the album – bar the opening instrumental – which actually fades. We then get the first ever female vocal on an Alan Parsons Project album, as Clare Torry (yes, that one – you remember “The Great Gig in the Sky” don't you?) takes command for “Don't Hold Back”, which

I must admit is one of my least favourites on this album – and I don't have many of those. But this to me comes across as too straight-forward rock and roll, just a bit too ordinary. It is nice to hear a woman singing for once, it's just a pity that it's on such a, well, ordinary song. I can't really think of much to say about it and I always forget what it goes like when I scan the track listing for this album. Its only saving grace is that it's almost the shortest track, at just over three and a half minutes, and it returns to the trend of ending suddenly. Even Bairnson's guitar solo sounds bored and pedestrian, as if he really can't be bothered. Much better is “Secret Garden”, basically an instrumental, with Chris Rainbow on his second visit to the mike on this album just performing some sort of scat singing and Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies, The main melody kind of parallels, more slowly, “Hyper-gamma Spaces”, one of the instrumentals off the previous Pyramid. An interesting track – I'd call it an instrumental, and it also features the smooth sax of Mel Collins. And it fades.

That takes us to the closer, where another female, this time Lesley Duncan, sings the truly beautiful second ballad, the heart-aching “If I Could Change Your Mind”, with the most breathtaking orchestral work by the Orchestra of the Munich Chamber Opera yet. Gorgeous vocal harmonies, gentle piano, punchy drums that come in just where they're needed to be most effective, and an emotive guitar solo from Bairnson all go to make this one hell of a closer, and one of my top ten APP songs. Interesting and sad thing about Duncan is that she could have been huge, but rather like the Genesis-man-who-never-was, Anthony Philipps, she suffered from chronic stagefright and so never managed to make it big. A real pity, because she has a beautiful, soothing and when needed, powerful and emotional voice, and listening to her is a great way to close this excellent album.

TRACK LISTING

Lucifer
You Lie Down With Dogs
I'd Rather Be a Man
You Won't Be There
Winding Me Up
Damned if I Do
Don't Hold Back
Secret Garden
If I Could Change Your Mind

Without question this goes down as one of my favourite Alan Parsons Project records, but it can in no way be described as progressive rock. Basically it's a collection of pop or pop/rock songs following a theme; a concept album, certainly, but prog rock does not have a monopoly on the concept album, as The Who, among others, will tell you. It's something of a left turn from the previous I Robot, and yet not so much so, and does not in any way presage the opus that was to come the following year, The Turn of a Friendly Card. as the boys went in a more proggy direction for a short time.

It would be another three years before they would have any sort of big hit single though, and until then they would keep plugging away, this album doing well in Europe (probably due to the popularity of “Lucifer” in the clubs) and, rather paradoxically, far better in the USA than it did at home, where it didn't even crack the top forty. They were, however, slowly but surely coming to the notice of the general public, their fame due to peak with the iconic album Eye in the Sky, and then, sadly, to fade away in terms of mainstream success.

Rating: 9.5/10
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