The Time Machine (1999)
An appropriate title for an album that bids farewell to the last century, and the last millennium, but an album which I feel failed to capitalise on this on many fronts, full of mostly weak, second-rate songs and without any real direction. Was Parsons losing it? Was this the beginning of the end? After such a strong start to his own solo career, how did he produce this piece of drivel? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that he had virtually no input into the creative process here. While he wrote about half of the previous albums, here he only has a hand in one instrumental, and so how much of an Alan Parsons album is this, and how much is it just, like
Dark Side of the Moon, engineered and produced by him? But then again he does play various instruments on it and adds backing vocals. Another may be due to the amount of instrumentals – five in all, six, if you include the bonus tracks – that can only be said to be filling out the album.
It's also a short album. For one with twelve tracks, only four are over five minutes and one over six, and some of the instrumentals are a minute or just slightly over. I remember being massively disappointed with this album, so much so, that I featured it in the “Nice song, Shame About the Album!” section in my journal. Yeah, it's that bad. At least, that's how I remember it. I've never given it a full review so let's see if it really is as poor as I remember.
It kicks off with one of those instrumentals, labelled “The Time Machine Part I” and therefore essentially the title track, with Bairnson's haunting guitar, lush synth and frenetic strings section giving way to a boppy, dancy beat complete with handclap drums and a nice ringing guitar motif. It's certainly reminiscent of previous APP and indeed Alan Parsons solo instrumentals, but it does stand as very much its own animal. It's a good, promising start, with those trumpeting keys we've become so used to hearing playing their part in recreating the Parsons sound. Is it too long, at almost five minutes? I'd have to say no: it doesn't repeat or stretch itself out, and the time is well used to be fair. Fades out nicely and leaves me with the impression this could be another great album, and into “Temporalia”, which is really just a low synth line backing one Professor Frank Close as he rabbits on about the universe. Quite boring really, but there's only a minute of it.
For the first time ever, Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley takes the mike on an Alan Parsons project, as he helms “Out of the Blue”, again driven on Bairnson's sweet guitar licks; a slower, mid-paced tune which almost fits a a ballad, but not quite. Hadley's voice is of course unmistakable and instantly recognisable; whether it fits on an Alan Parsons song I really can't say. It's a decent song, certainly, with a sense of desperation about it, an almost Thin Lizzy-style guitar solo from Bairnson, though very restrained, and some nice backing vocals too. I think where it begins to go wrong for me then is in “Call Up”, which I truly hate. It's just such a banal lyric, envisaging the return of cultural heroes such as Marvin Gaye and Leonard Cohen, and in effect it's really a reworking, lyrically, of Paul McCartney's “Someone's Knockin' at the Door”. Vocals are taken by Neil Lockwood, who played with my heroes ELO (though the name does not ring any bells) although when he starts singing I could have sworn he was Stevie Wonder!
It's a very funk-based song, with a slick beat and jangly guitar, brass which just about manages to fall into the “Parsons March”, but mostly sounds soul to me; not that there's anything wrong with that, just I'm not used to hearing it on an Alan Parsons album. Not sure it suits. For an Ian Bairnson solo penned track, this is, to quote Fry, weak. Okay, apparently Neil Lockwood was part of ELO Part II, Bev Bevan's offshoot band when he split from Jeff Lynne, so that's why I haven't heard of him. Yeah, the song's that uninteresting that I had time to head off and check out his bio! The next one drags my attention right back though, one of the (few) standouts and the first real ballad. With a soft, simple piano melody backing him, it's pure joy to welcome back Colin Blunstone after so long away, and he is needed. He really brings an extra layer of class to “Ignorance is Bliss”, another Bairnson song, and to his credit Ian holds back the guitar here and lets the piano and synths do their thing. Lovely full backing vocals, and Blunstone is effortlessly perfect as ever. I would count this as probably the best thing Bairnson has ever written, and he even lets loose with a smooth sax solo (he's obviously learned in the interim) which just finishes this most perfect song off to even greater perfection. Just stunning, and the first song that gave me hope that “Call Up” might have been a nasty aberration, and I could look forward to the album leaving that behind and improving from now on.
Sadly, that was not to be the case. Worse awaits. But for now, “Rubber Universe” is a cool funky little instrumental, the first I think that Ian Bairnson has written solo, that cheers with a happy busy little guitar and synth line with I don't know, something like mirambas maybe riffing through it. A good guitar solo – the first proper one I think from Bairnson and followed up with a short sax break (and I mean short: a few notes only) then back into the main melody for a longer sax part about halfway which leads up to another resumption of the main motif but this times stays playing alongside it. Pretty sweet little track really. And it does get better, for now, with an Irish icon making her maiden (sorry) appearance on one of Alan's records, Clannad's Maire (or Moya, if you prefer) Brennan breathing the same amount of effortless class into “The Call of the Wild” as Blunstone does into “Ignorance is Bliss.” It's also a ballad, and very freely based around the old Irish traditional tune “She Moved Through the Fair”, which has also been appropriated before, most famously by Simple Minds for the main melody of the opening section of “Belfast Chlld.”
It's a nice idea in the lyric, a sort of all humanity sticking together thing, perhaps a Gene Roddenberry-style of can't-we-all-just-get-along message, not the worst in the world to espouse I guess. Gorgeous addition of bagpipes (don't say that often) and melodeon to give the song a real ethnic feel, with some powerful string arrangements and a rising guitar solo, just wonderful. That is, however, very nearly it, as the next one up, “No Future in the Past”, written by Stuart Elliot and featuring the return of Neil Lockwood, doesn't do it for me. Again it's too straight-ahead rock for me, with little nuance. It has a decent hook in the chorus, true, and good backing vocals, and it's not a bad song, but it's just not a very good Alan Parsons one, I feel. I also hate the sudden, tail-off ending, and it's into “Press Rewind”, another Elliot vehicle, a slower song with a sort of drab marching fell to it and a descending kind of guitar melody, Meh. Even the return of Graham Dye, who guested on Alan's second solo album can't really lift this song out of the realms of the mediocre.
There's only one vocal track left, but thankfully it's another standout, and another female vocalist, and finally another ballad as Beverly Craven fulfils the last singing duties on the album, backed by again simple piano in a song written by Bairnson about the loss of a beloved pet. “The Very Last Time” is touching and heart-breaking, and might have been a better way to end the album with its simple, honest lines, its gospel-tinged piano marching alongside Craven's soulful voice, the backing vocals also evoking a spiritual oneness, as does the wonderful contribution from the Philharmonia Orchestra, but there are two instrumental left to close us out.
The first is “Far Ago and Long Away”, the second Ian Bairnson instrumental track, and it's characterised by spacy synth and a thick bass line running through the piece, slow and almost menacing in ways, very futuristic, with in fact some sort of chant going through it as well. Does that stop it being an instrumental? I don't think so, personally. It's quite long, over five minutes, very restrained and not quite but almost a drone, changing little throughout its run. The closer then is the bookend to the album, less than two minutes of “The Time Machine (Part 2)”, which reprises the opening instrumental pretty much.
TRACK LISTING
The Time Machine (Part 1)
Temporalia
Out of the Blue
Call Up
Ignorance is Bliss
Rubber Universe
The Call of the Wild
No Future in the Past
Press Rewind
The Very Last Time
Far Ago and Long Away
The Time Machine (Part 2)
In the end then, not the crapfest I remember, but still far below the standard Alan had set for himself, both with his ten albums with the band and with his first two solo albums. The two he released after this are unknown to me: I've never heard a song off either, but so far, though this is not as terrible as I had remembered it to be, it's still far and away the weakest album of the solo era, and in fact I might go so far as to say it's the weakest album including all the Alan Parsons Project releases. It has its moments, and when it shines it really shines brightly, and the instrumentals are, generally, decent, but where it gets let down is by the inclusion of some pretty naff tracks that pull the overall quality down badly.
There's no question Ian Bairnson is a growing talent in songwriting - “Call of the Wild” and “Ignorance is Bliss” prove this, if any proof were needed – and Stuart Elliot can, as Rik Mayall once quipped, bash out a tune or two. But I would have preferred to have seen more input into the writing of his own album by Alan Parsons. In effect, here, he's playing on and producing, for the most part, other people's songs, and it makes it hard – given that he's no singer – to see this as other than an Ian Bairnson album produced by Alan Parsons. I don't know if this state of affairs becomes the norm on his later albums, but if so it will be a pity, as it will have then become harder to think of them as Alan Parsons albums.
I have to say, I couldn't see Eric Woolfson having given over so much control, or allowing it be taken from him.
Rating: 7.9/10