Trollheart's Album Discography Reviews: The Alan Parsons Project
 

The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980)
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Though both Eve and I Robot had explored related themes this was really the first proper concept album from the Alan Parsons Project, based around one of humanity's vices, gambling. All right: their debut, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, was a concept based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, but that was all instrumental, so this is the first chance they got to explore common ideas through the medium of actual songs, rather than just musical passages. The title track is an epic sixteen-minute piece, broken into five sections, and easily the longest APP song ever. The album was also the first to feature Eric Woolfson on vocals, and is far from my favourite APP album, but far from the worst either. Its strength, or weakness, lies in the title track: after all, if you don't like it then that's really about a third of the album you're not going to want to listen to, and while it's good in my opinion it's perhaps not as good as it could have been. The rest of the album is a kind of hit-and-miss affair, with some very good tracks and some, well, not so good ones, as we shall see.

"May Be a Price to Pay" starts us off with synthesised trumpets and a somewhat ominous-sounding fanfare before it comes to life on the back of David Paton's instantly recognisable bassline and swirling keys from Eric Woolfson, uptempo percussion from Stuart Elliot. The vocal is taken by Elmer Gantry, AKA Dave Terry. He has a strong rock style voice, and it is of course and always has been a feature of the Alan Parsons Project that they utilise different vocalists on each album, almost on every track. There's a nice orchestral section which flows into a smooth keyboard line with attendant piano, almost edging into semi-jazz territory for a moment, then the main melody reasserts itself. Of course the guitar work of Ian Bairnson is as always flawless, if not quite as pronounced as expected. A busy keyboard line brings in "Games People Play" with a somewhat more funky feel to it, and the vocal taken by Lenny Zakatek, one of my least favourite APP vocalists, though here he does a decent job. I've just always found him very harsh in style compared to Woolfson, Blunstone or Miles.

The song concerns the desperate need to fill up the time now that the family have grown and moved on, and can be taken I suppose as both a reference to sexual games or to gambling, with the line "Games people play/ In the middle of the night", though with the theme being centred around the latter one would have to assume the song is about that. Great solo this time from Bairnson as he's allowed to do what he does best, then we drift into the standout of the album, as mentioned the first vocal performance from Eric Woolfson, though it would of course not be the last. "Time" is the ballad on the album, and like the river about which Woolfson sings, it flows along gently on a breezy synth passage and rippling piano. The difference in the vocal from Woolfson and the one from Zakatek is the difference between night and day. Woolfson breathes the song, almost an exhalation, soft, gentle, caressing, and he has the perfect voice to take the album's laidback slow ballad. Again beautiful orchestration accompanies him, supplied by the Orchestra of the Munich Chamber Opera, and really adds an extra touch of class to an already classy song. When Woolfson goes up a register it's just like hearing a male angel sing, and the almost ELO-like violins and cellos just make it perfect. The backing vocal from Parsons himself, singing a separate lyric, adds the final sheen to the last verse.

As "Time" fades down and slips away like the memories of a dying dream, it's rather unfortunate that the mellifluous tones of Woolfson are followed by a return for Zakatek, in the comparatively substandard "I Don't Want to Go Home", which despite its interesting solo piano intro turns into a relatively basic rock song. Although it retains the basic motifs of the APP I just find it quite disappointing, which is not to say that it's a bad song, but it can't hold a candle to "Time" or even "May Be a Price to Pay". Again it's got an element of funk in it, particularly in Bairnson's guitar work, with some nice trumpeting synth. That takes us to the first instrumental, and the APP are known for a few. This more or less introduces us to the title track, and opens with a whistling keyboard intro like something out of an Ennio Moricone western before breaking into a melody which has by now become synonymous with the APP, the bass of Paton joining with the smooth percussion of Elliot and the sparkling keyswork of Woolfson and Parsons, a little sound like fingers clicking and then a sort of saxophone line coming in. As instrumentals go, it's pretty cool.

Sixteen minutes and twenty-four seconds of the title track then closes the album, and you either love this or hate it. It's split into five sections, the first of which is called "The Turn of a Friendly Card Part One" and features Chris Rainbow on vocals, as indeed does most of the piece apart from one section. Opening on a medieval little piano piece it brings in flute and some sparse bass before Rainbow's voice sings the vocal, sounding rather pleasantly like Woolfson, in fact I used to think it was him. He cries "The game never ends/ When your whole world depends/ On the turn of a friendly card", a theme which will recur later in the song. Nice little laidback acoustic guitar line from Bairnson then a gong sounds and we hear the sounds of a crowd as we move into "Snake Eyes", and things get a little more intense. A big, thick, marching bassline and slow, thumping, almost heartbeat percussion brings in a sharp, swaggering guitar line from Ian Bairnson, the song changing from slow ballad into a more sleazy, shuffle style.

Another fine little guitar solo from Bairnson, more punchy this time, with a descending synth to take us into "The Ace of Swords" which is the instrumental in the piece, played on what sounds like a lyre or lute, and with soft keyboard accompanying it, revisiting the theme from the first movement but then adding in some harder, faster material as the percussion ramps up and the keys get a bit more intense. The trumpeting fanfare makes a return and once it gets going this piece is mostly keyboard-driven with some orchestration helping out. Violins, violas, cellos and harps help to heighten the sense of anticipation and urgency and desperation as the gambler's addiction begins to take him over and he can see no way out. Indeed, eventually he decides there is "Nothing Left to Lose" and this brings us to the fourth section as Eric Woolfson takes the vocal, accompanied by Bairnson. The tempo slows a little; it's not a ballad but it's certainly not a rocker, almost acoustic in ways.

Some nice backing vocals here too, and a ticking bassline that keeps the rhythm going as celtic style keys enter, with something like uileann pipes or somesuch, perhaps an accordion sound there too. Bit of reggae thrown in there before the tempo kicks up again and the melody from "Snake Eyes" comes back in. The final part of the piece is "The Turn of a Friendly Card Part Two", and basically returns to the melody and lyric of the first part, with lush orchestration and Chris Rainbow back on vocals, reprising his role from the opening part, and giving it all he has on the final lyrics. Most of this is instrumental though, with the final two minutes a showcase for Bairnson, Woolfson and the orchestra, fading out magnificently.

TRACK LISTING

1. May Be a Price to Pay
2. Games People Play
3. Time
4. I Don't Wanna Go Home
5. The Gold Bug
6. The Turn of a Friendly Card
(i) The Turn of a Friendly Card Part One
(ii) Snake Eyes
(iii) The Ace of Swords
(iv) Nothing Left to Lose
(v) The Turn of a Friendly Card Part Two

An album with a sixteen-minute track was never going to set the charts alight, and though the APP had their hits it really wasn't till after this album, with their most memorable and successful coming from the Eye in the Sky album, released two years later. But lack of hit singles didn't keep Parsons down and with the Project he went on to record another six albums before embarking on a solo career under his own name, but basically Alan Parsons Project albums in all but name, with the conspicuous absence of Eric Woolfson, after the two founders had fallen out. Woolfson passed away in 2009.

An ambitious album, The Turn of a Friendly Card realises its lofty goals more often than it does not, but there are points on the album where it's almost degenerating from high concept into basic rock and I think this is where it lets the listener down. This should have been a fluid, linked piece of music from start to finish and though the title track mostly accomplishes this, it is some of the preceding tracks that prevent this album from gaining a place it might otherwise have deserved within the hierarchy of the Alan Parsons Project's releases.

Rating: 7/10

Tales of Mystery and Imagination was NOT all instrumental. Most of the tracks have vocals.

It's been a long time since I listened to it. Not one of my favourites I have to say. I thought it was all instrumental. I'll have to check it out, if you say so.

Edit: Yeah I see. I was mixing up the fact that side two is one long instrumental ("The Fall of the House of Usher") - my bad. D'oh!

I only own Tales and I Robot. My general impression of The Alan Parsons Project is that as their career progressed their music became more polished and also less interesting. However I must admit that I only know the title track from Turn of a Friendly Card, and I know it gets a fair bit of respect, so I probably should give it a proper listen sometime.

Pyramid (1978 )
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One of my favourite Alan Parsons Project albums, Pyramid is only their third album and is a concept based on - anyone? - yeah, pyramids. There's a lot of spacey instrumental work on it, some really good songs and two excellent ballads. It's also got a really cool sleeve, designed by those supremos of cover art, Hipgnosis. Like most APP albums, the man himself does not take part, other than produce the album and write or co-write all the songs.

It opens with a suitably enigmatic and weird instrumental, called “Voyager”, which basically consists of a guitar intro, then some spacey keyboards and a guitar section joined by bass and light percussion, which ends up forming the intro to “What Goes Up”, the first song proper on the album. With vocals by David Paton, it's a mid-paced, slightly jazzy number with great bass (also from Paton, as he's the bass player), which asks the question “If all things must fall/ Why build a miracle at all? / If all things must pass/ Even a miracle won't last.” The song seems to pay tribute to the millennia that the Pyramids have lasted, but notes that what goes up, must (eventually) come down.

This then fades into the first of two great ballads on the album. “The Eagle Will Rise Again” is one of the Alan Parsons Project's great ballads. With lovely string arrangements and evocative guitar from Ian Bairnson, the vocal this time taken by Colin Blunstone, who you may recognise as the voice on APP's big hit “Old and Wise”. Great backing vocals on this song, with some great lyrics: ”Many words are spoken/ When there's nothing to say/ They fall upon the ears of those/ Who don't know the way/ To read between the lines...” Bairnson's guitar melody is the main lynchpin of the track though, underpinning the whole song with its simple phrasing.

Things get a little rocky then for “One More River”, this time sung by Lenny Zakatek, never among my favourite vocalists but he suits the song here. Sort of. It's jarring, unless you know the APP well, to keep hearing different voices on every song, but you soon get used to it. “One More River” is a fast, bouncy rock song with great guitars and some nice synth adding flavour, and something that sounds like horns. Nice lazy guitar solo in there, and a great sax solo. “Can't Take it With You” is one of my favourite tracks on the album, with its tale of the man who is dead but wants to remain on Earth, and is trying to convince the overworked assistant of Charon, the Boatman of the Dead, to let him stay.

”I sympathise completely” the flunky tells the dead man ”But there's nothing I can do/ I am just obeying orders/ I'm a simple soul like you.” The song is carried on a bouncy, rocky beat with great “whistling” keyboard and cracking guitar. With Dean Ford this time on vocal duty, Charon's assistant smiles ”Well you really are persuasive/ But I've heard it all before.” The song alternates between boppy rocker and somewhat slower, almost bluesy sections. About a minute to the end there's a great guitar solo very reminiscent of Dave Gilmour - he's not guesting on this, is he? Just like I could have sworn it was Gerry Rafferty on backing vocals at the end, but neither are credited, so I guess not.

Another weird track follows this, an instrumental called “In the Lap of the Gods”, starting off with tolling bells in the distance, and an Egyptian kind of melody, then the synths get heavy and the drums come in, creating what has since become pretty much the signature Alan Parsons Project theme. Something like a sitar or dulcimer is used then, with choral vocals. Due credit must be given here to the two keyboard wizards, Duncan Mackay and the other founder member of the APP, Eric Woolfson, who do a great job here of creating and building up the atmosphere and tone of the piece.

A very dramatic and epic piece, almost film theme quality, “In the Lap of the Gods” is followed by the zaniest and most fun track on the album, “Pyramania”, where Jack Harris on vocals tries to explain his fascination, some might say obsession with pyramids. ”I've been told/ Someone in the know can be sure/ That his luck will be as good as gold/ Money in the bank/ And you don't even pay for it/ If you fold a dollar in the shape/ Of the pyramid that's printed on the back!” The music is boppy and suitably upbeat and breezy, then we're into the best instrumental on the album, “Hyper-gamma Spaces”, with a driving beat reminiscent of Pink Floyd's “On the Run” (well, Alan Parsons did work on Dark Side of the Moon!), great breathless keyboards and a sweet little guitar solo, with choral vocals or synth, I don't know which, probably the latter, to take us to the closer.

“Shadow of a Lonely Man” is the tragic tale of a man who has found fame, but lost his identity. It's played in a very epic, sweeping way with excellent emotional vocals from John Miles as he cries ”Look at me now/ A shadow of the man I used to be/ Look through my eyes/ And through the years of loneliness you'll see/ To the times in my life when I could not bear/ To lose a simple game.” It's opened on simple piano but gets very orchestral, turning into a real production piece with strings and full orchestral arrangement.

As the song nears its end, the singer remarks wryly ”But the sound of the crowd/ When they come to see me now/ Is not the same/ And the jest of it all/ Is I can't recall my name.” It's a powerful indictment of fame taking over your life, and losing sight of your goals, and in the end losing your happiness for the sake of being famous. It's a lovely ballad, if bitter, and it closes the album extremely well.

If you've never heard an Alan Parsons Project album before (shame on you!) the multiple vocalists may take a little getting used to, but it's a tribute to this album, and to the APP, that it sounds as good now, over thirty years after it was recorded, as it did back then. Quality is timeless, they say, and this album certainly proves that axiom.

TRACK LISTING

1. Voyager
2. What Goes Up
3. The Eagle Will Rise Again
4. One More River
5. Can't Take it With You
6. In the Lap of the Gods
7. Pyramania
8. Hyper-gamma Spaces
9. Shadow of a Lonely Man

Rating: 8.5/10

This is an interesting conclusion. Are you one of these people who prefers music a little raw or experimental? I can't say that the albums get "more polished": Parsons is a superb engineer and producer and all of the APP albums shine with excellent production, but if you've only heard the ones above then I would recommend Gaudi, Ammonia Avenue, Eve and to some extent Eye in the Sky (though I do tend to think that one dines out on its two major singles which support a few not-so-perfect tracks). You could also look into his solo material, which will be posted here in due course, especially On Air and Try Anything Once.

Maybe it was the radio stations that played him but he started out being played on AOR radio (Tales, I Robot) to Adult Contemporary radio (Eye in the Sky) here in Baltimore. Maybe he was trying to become a little more commercial?

Anyway, I do like some of his stuff and the Edgar Allan Poe bits are pretty damned good. I also like I Robot and Pyramid but he's more hit or miss for me after that.

90's Bulls has Eye in the Sky burned into my brain. We (a band I was in) used to open for a band that did that tune for their opener and they did it really well.

I had a lotta trouble putting that sentence together.

Yep they use "Sirius", the instrumental intro to the title track as their run-out song or something don't they? I think Parsons never actually courted hit singles; if you look at his and the Project's output, there's plenty of songs on albums like the ones I mentioned as well as Stereotomy and even Vulture Culture (which I consider to be a poor album but it did give them an MTV hit in "Let's Talk About Me") that could have yielded hit singles but didn't. I think the fact that it was always called The Alan Parsons Project and never Band indicates how loose a collection of musicians it was: everyone was always off doing other things, and also the fact that they almost never played live shows too that they weren't too bothered about mainstream chart commercial success. Even so, almost all of their albums sold well, and compilations still continue to do so.

I wouldn't say I like music "raw", but I do like it a little experimental.

When I say "more polished", I am thinking of songs like "Eye In the Sky", Stereotomy" and "Vulture Culture", which I think of as reasonably competent 80s-style synth-pop but nothing more. On the other hand I considered the first two albums definitely progressive.

Don't get me wrong; there are still some gems on the later albums, but not enough to make me want to be an APP completist.

I must say I was quite impressed with a couple of the songs you posted from Pyramid.

Use of more than one vocalist does not bother me at all if the songs are good enough and suit the singers. These songs are a little reminiscent of some of Tony Banks' solo albums, on which he farms out the singing duties to other people, such as Nick Kershaw, Toyah Wilcox, and Fish. I think if you like this early Alan Parsons stuff you might enjoy albums like Still and Strictly Inc.

Yes I'm a big Genesis fan, and I have a few of Tony's solo albums - A Curious Feeling, BankStatement, Seven, a few others. I don't particularly mind the assorted vocalists thing either - at least I don't have to listen to Lenny all the time! :laughing: But some people, I know, get used to one singer and it's a bit of a jolt if anyone else takes the vocal duties, even with a band like Deacon Blue or Prefab Sprout or The Beautiful South it can be a little jarring when you hear a new voice. But coming from a prog background I'm used to that, with bands like Mostly Autumn and then of course there's the Eagles and bands like that, so no, it's no real problem to me either, as long as I like all the vocalists, and with a few small exceptions, I do.

If you enjoyed Pyramid my advice would be to move on to Ammonia Avenue and Gaudi, which for my money are two of the better albums, though as I say his solo stuff rocks too - well, the first two albums anyway.

Those were some exciting times.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6kiimEsYc

In the liner notes to the remastered CD of Tales, Parsons states that "The Alan Parsons Project" was originally a name to refer to "the thing you are holding in your hand." That is, the Tales album WAS the project. It was only after they became satisfied with that release and decided to release more music that the "project" began to refer to the band itself.

I see. Interesting stuff. I guess they just found it was a project that worked. I came to them through "Eye in the Sky" and "Old and Wise", later "Don't Answer Me", and just started getting their albums. I can't claim to have been, like some bands I got into (Marillion for instance) in on the ground floor, so to speak, but once I got into them I did my usual and started buying all their albums. I was into them early enough for Ammonia Avenue to be a new album, not just for me buying it, but actually new, so after that all the releases I bought were as they came out.

On Air (1996)
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The second of Alan Parsons' solo efforts, On Air was conceived with ex-Alan Parsons Project guitarist Ian Bairnson, and is a concept album, based on the theme of flight. It kicks off with a short little snippet of a song which will later be heard in its entirety, called “Blue Blue Sky”. The track begins with the sound of birdsong, then acoustic guitar as the vocal is sung in leisurely fashion by Eric Stewart, who sings one other track and will also reprise this in full later. This leads into “Too Close To the Sun”, as Parsons goes right back into antiquity and legend to relate the tale of Icarus. It's a basically keyboard-led song, with you-know-who at the keys, some nice sax and a taped part halfway where some children talk about the Icarus legend in the innocent way of the very young. Neil Lockwood takes vocal duties on this, while Stewart is back for “Blown By the Wind”, a ballad but much more guitar-led, based on the sport of hot-air ballooning, which ties in nicely with the album sleeve. There's a great sense of freedom in the lyric, as the wind takes the balloon away, up into the blue: ”Now everything that we possess/ That fills our empty lives/ Is only good for leaving far behind.” Often felt like that!

Although this is credited as an Alan Parsons album, it's Ian Bairnson who writes or co-writes every song but one, with Parsons collaborating on four of the eleven tracks. One of those four is the next track, “Cloudbreak”, which is an instrumental, starting off with the sound of a propeller engine starting up. It's an uptempo track, lots of good keyboard but again mostly guitar, played by Bairnson himself. Definitely gives the idea of flight: you could imagine it as the backing track on one of those National Geographic shows or something like Classic Aircraft.

The fear of flying, a phobia many live with in their daily lives, is dealt with next in “I can't look down”, with Neil Lockwood again taking the mike. The track begins in very Alan Parsons Project style, with recordings of air traffic control over the opening, a sharp guitar as Lockwood sings ”Another passenger/ Your baggage, thank you sir/ I don't want to go!/ What am I doing here? / I feel so sick with fear/ Lord, please don't let it show!” As reluctant passenger settling into his seat, he worries ”What if the engine dies?/ These are no friendly skies.” It's a good rocky track, something in the mould of “Let's Talk About Me” from APP's Vulture Culture album, and written entirely by Bairnson.

Things get slow, and indeed spiritual next, for “Brother Up in Heaven”, a song written by Bairnson in honour and remembrance of his cousin, who was shot down over Iraq in a friendly-fire incident. It's a haunting piece, and you can feel the genuine pain in the lyric. It's a piano-led ballad, Parsons expertly restrained at the keyboard. Lockwood again takes vocals for this extremely personal song, and it's quite a highlight of the album as he sings ”It's strange here without you/ And it's so hard to see/ So brother up in Heaven/ Please wait up for me.” Some truly heartfelt guitar work from Bairnson really nails this down as his song.

Another dedication, the next track, “Fall free”, while not a ballad, is an homage to skysurfing champion Rob Harris, who died in 1995 while filming a commercial. For this song the guys draft in the vocal talents of FM's Steve Overland, and he does a great job on it. Starting off low-key, with just bass and then electric guitar, the song mushrooms into a powerful ode to the fallen skysurfer. It's followed then by a very curious instrumental, bass-led with good synth lines, which uses audio clips of former president John F. Kennedy talking about the importance of going to the moon to make its point. “Apollo” is about as close as Alan Parsons has come to house music, and in some ways is quite reminiscent of “Urbania” from Stereotomy, but with a much bouncier beat. You could dance to this!

“So Far Away” remembers the Space Shuttle program, is another ballad and has a very downbeat ending: ”Now they cry for justice/ As if justice will be done/ But the eye up in the sky/ Is flying too close to the sun/ Challenger is falling/ And the race has now been run.” Despite its doom-laden message, that's a very clever piece of writing, as it mentions Alan Parsons Project album Eye in the Sky and also one of the previous tracks, “Too Close to the Sun”. Another guest star on vocals here, this time the inimitable Christopher Cross.

In many ways, the centrepiece of the album is the penultimate track, “One Day to Fly”, which starts off as something of a ballad but changes halfway into an uptempo rocker, cataloguing the first efforts of Leonardo da Vinci to create flying machines, how he was ridiculed at the time, and how his vision came true, albeit hundreds of years after his death. ”Just a charcoal sketch on canvas/ Made them laugh, but now they see/ That the artist had a vision / That the wind would set us free.” It becomes a powerful little track and ends very dramatically, with a very typical Alan Parsons Project hook, leading into the closer, the full version of “Blue Blue Sky”, with Eric Stewart again on vocals, bringing the album full circle.

If you like the Alan Parsons Project the chances are you will like this album. If you're a fan of well-crafted and produced songs, you're probably going to like it. And if you're an aircraft enthusiast or have any interest in flight, it may have something to say to you. There's hardly a bad track on it, and I would certainly recommend it.

TRACK LISTING

1. Blue Blue Sky
2. Too Close To the Sun
3. Blown By the Wind
4. Cloudbreak
5. I Can't Look Down
6. Brother Up In Heaven
7. Fall Free
8. Apollo
9. So Far Away
10. One Day To Fly
11. Blue Blue Sky


Rating: 9.6/10

I Robot (1977)
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This is, to be fair, not one of my favourite albums from the Alan Parsons Project, but I came across this review in a forgotten folder of documents recently, and it seems to have been written for my original journal, way back in 2008. That's a long time ago, and hey, I wrote it, so it may as well see the light of day, even if it is four years later.

On the whole, their albums have been pretty much consistently good over the years, but if I had to pick one of theirs I consider to be slightly sub-par, which would be the Alan Parsons Project record I listen to least, and perhaps like least, this would be it. I certainly don't hate it - don't hate any APP album, although it shares second place with The Time Machine as the one of theirs I'm most disappointed with - but it would be one of the last albums I would suggest to someone who was thinking of checking out their music.

The second album released by the band, I Robot is not a bad album at all, I just think later releases were a lot better. But there’s a lot to be excited about on this album. Three really good ballads, as well as what became the trademark of the APP, the instrumental. The album starts and ends with one, though the closer, entitled “Genesis Ch 1 v.32” reveals something of a mystery, thirteen years later. For more, read on.

The Alan Parsons Project has always been famous for utilising as many vocalists almost as tracks on their albums, and people who have sung on their albums include the likes of Lenny Zakatek, Colin Blunstone, Eric Woolfson, Chris Rainbow, David Paton and Gary Brooker, to mention just a few. It helped keep them fresh, so that each new song sounded different, and it was a formula that worked for the APP for over thirty years.

The album opens on one of those instrumentals, which is in fact the title track. It's a slowburner, starting very quietly and coming in on rising synth and keys then choral vocals, which sound female but could of course be created on a synth float across the melody, pulling in that sound that was to become so familiar on APP albums, the sort of fast bassy run on the keys (or maybe it is a bass, I'm no expert) and the guitar riffs that became so identified with Parsons' work. It becomes quite boppy as many of the Alan Parsons Project's instrumentals do, or did, and the female choral voices are joined by male ones as the piece runs on. To Parsons' credit, it doesn't sound overly robotic, which is how you would probably have expected him to approach such a composition.

That takes us to the first vocal track, and a singer not too often used by APP, with a much rougher, more rock-and-roll voice than the likes of Blunstone and Woolfson, Lenny Zakatek. He usually tends to feature, if at all, on only one track per album, and here he puts in a good performance on “I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You”, with an ominous piano opening which soon kicks into a real rocker (for the APP, that is: they were not exactly ever known for totally rockin' out), and his voice really suits the track. In fact, you can see seeds sown here that would bear fruit in later albums. This song is echoed two years later in “You Lie Down With Dogs” and also “I’d Rather Be a Man”, both from the excellent Eve album.

The first of three ballads is next up, with the rather wistful and wonderful “Some Other Time” which, though it starts off all folky and pastoral and with Peter Straker on lead vocals gets a little rockier as it goes on. Straker would not feature on any other Parsons albums, and indeed many of the vocalists here - some of them legendary icons - would only sing on this album, before Alan established his stable of vocalists, among them Colin Blunstone, David Paton, Chris Rainbow and John Miles. “Breakdown” just doesn't do it for me. It's a mid-paced rocker but I feel it adds nothing to the album, and even with Hollies legend Allan Clarke on vocals I can't get into the song.

One of the standouts comes in the form of the second ballad, the gentle “Don't Let it Show”, on vocals a man who would reprise his role on the next album but after that there would be very little heard about Dave Townsend. It's a sterling turn from him here though, and his voice is very heartfelt and emotional. The song itself rides on soft organ from Parsons, with the slow but sudden percussion really filling out the track. Future echoes, as it were, from APP's big hit single “Old and Wise”, in the lyric, when he sings ”If you smile when they mention my name/ They'll never own you/ And if you laugh when they say I'm to blame/ They'll never know you”. It also features what I'd term the “Parsons march”, which became so much a part of the APP sound, and indeed it's this that takes the track out to fade.

Riding on a thick, funky bass and some seriously new-wave keyboards, “The Voice” is another song I could live without on this album, though to be fair they are in the minority. Another rock legend takes the mike to help Parsons out on this, and it's Cockney Rebel's Steve Harley. He does a great job, but can only work with what he's got, and I would put this in the realm of a bonus track or an unreleased one; I don't think it's good enough to be on the album.

It says something that out of the ten tracks on this album, four of them are instrumentals, and each different. Not too many bands could get away with that, but the Alan Parsons Project always did, primarily because their instrumentals were just so damn good! Take a listen to “Pipeline” from Ammonia Avenue, or “Hyper-gamma Spaces” from Pyramid to see what I mean. And who could forget the jaunty yet haunting “Sirius”, the lead-in to perhaps one of their most famous and successful tracks, the title from the Eye in the Sky album?

The second of these is next, with “Nucleus” a short, three-and-a-half minute piece that comes in on what sounds like NASA chatter and then floats on a big spacey atmospheric synth with no percussion; quite ELO in a way. Very celestial sounding, with some soft drumming making its way in on a faster rhythm than the main melody, a few little piano notes sprinkled along the way like breadcrumbs, the spacey synth segueing perfectly into the standout, and the third and final ballad, the beautiful and moving “Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)”, with some fine pedal steel from B.J. Cole and exquisite rippling and chiming keys. A song of looking back, realising some opportunities have gone but moving forward anyway, it's one of my favourite APP songs, full stop. Vocals are taken by Jack Harris, his only contribution to the album though he would resurface for next year's Pyramid.

Parsons then pulls the very unusual trick of finishing the album with not one, but two instrumentals. “Total Eclipse”, the only track on the album not written by he or Woolfson, is an eerie, minimalistic piece which indeed would be somewhat revisited on 1978's Pyramid in the track “In the Lap of the Gods”. It relies mostly on male and female vocal chorus, with what sounds like some sharp violin attack, and comes across almost as the incidental music to some low-budget horror movie. It is, to be blunt, weird. I don't particularly like it.

Ah, but then we close on “Genesis Ch1 v.32", which flows directly from “Total Eclipse” and ends the album triumphantly. There is a mystery here though (a “tale of mystery and imagination”, perhaps?) as an incredibly similar melody later shows up on Vangelis’s 1990 album The City, slightly (though not much) reworked and retitled “Procession”. This in itself is very odd, and something I remarked upon when reviewing The City a while back; Vangelis is certainly not known for covering other people's work - I don't think he ever has had a composition that wasn't original - and yet, the two songs are so similar it's virtually impossible to discount as coincidence. Perhaps the melody is based on some classical or other, older tune, yet this is referred to on neither artiste's album. A mystery, indeed, and one I've been trying to sort since I heard The City...

Despite this odd coincidence, if it is one, it's a great way to close the album and in general though I Robot doesn't consistently hit the highs I came to expect, and mostly got, from the Alan Parsons Project, it stands up quite well as their second album, and first of their own material, the debut being built around the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. A reasonable effort, and you could probably forgive them the few lower points on the album.

In conclusion then, a good album. Not a great album. But not a terrible one either. The good news was, there was much, much better to come.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Robot
2. I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You
3. Some Other Time
4. Breakdown
5. Don't Let it Show
6. The Voice
7. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)
8. Nucleus
9. Total Eclipse
10. Genesis Ch. 1 v.32

Rating: 7.0/10

Interesting what you say about not recommending I Robot to someone new to the APP. I think I like Tales better, but it may be a bit too proggy for some people, whereas I think I Robot hits the sweet spot between propressive and pop.

My first introduction to this album was the single, "I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You", and I remember thinking it was pretty ordinary. I now think it's perhaps the least interesting track on the album. It's one of those albums that I think gets better from the start almost to the end, Things reach a peak with "Day After Day", after which the remaining tracks seem more like little little afterthoughts to round out the album (but nicely though).

There was apparently a problem with the album title, which is why, unlike the anthology by Isaac Asimov, the title contains no comma. I don't think Asimov himself had any issue with their use of the title, but of course it was the publishers who had to be kept happy.

Yeah I definitely wouldn't recommend TOMAI either. If I was introducing someone to the APP, to be honest, I'd go Eye in the Sky (cos everyone knows those two songs) then maybe Ammonia Avenue and perhaps Eve. I'd include Gaudi later, but the heavy reliance on the architect's life there might turn some people off. I just feel those albums have a better overall flow of really good tracks (I can't think of a bad one on Eve or Ammonia Avenue, and while I know Eye in the Sky has some weak stuff on it, its position as the album with "the hits" on it I think might cause them to be overlooked or accepted). Another one I would not recommend is Vulture Culture, which while again it has good tracks stands as one of the weakest of the albums for me. Also, despite my love for them, I don't believe good starting points would be Pyramid or The Turn of a Friendly Card - not too many non-proggers can take an epic of more than ten minutes!

On a related point, I must say it's really nice to find someone new to talk about music I really like. I have my "allies" here, as it were, but overall most people are into stuff I'm not, and would scoff at Genesis, Marillion, APP or ELO. It's nice to have met someone who appreciates at least two of those bands, and it's been fun getting to know you musically. This is not meant in any way to be a gay come-on, in case you were worried. :laughing: It's just been so long since someone I don't know for years has replied to any of my posts positively and with genuine interest, other than DianneW and Eleanor Rigby, who are two really nice ladies, but I haven't had this sort of in-depth discussion with anyone for years now, so thanks for that, and long may it continue. :beer:

Not a gay come-on? Damn, I had my hopes up there... :D

But seriously, I'm more surprised by the fact there are so few other replies to these reviews. Maybe everyone just thinks these reviews threads are considered Trollheart's personal threads, look but don't touch.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...aRW-fH6s5qEcGg

No, generally speaking people tend not to comment in my threads, other than a few die-hards, unless they're going to slag me off for various things. I've been here long enough; it used to get to me but I'm way past that now. Also there is a decent amount of views so I know people are reading, just a lot of the guys here are not into this kind of "mainstream pop rock" or whatever they wish to call it. Post reviews of Bon Iver, they're all over it, post reviews of Bon Jovi, they'll ignore them or sneer at them. It's no big deal; I'm used to it.

Also, in fairness few threads in this section tend to get notice anyway, as they're kind of outside the main part of the forum. I've been writing journals for nearly ten years now, about twenty-five to thirty different ones in all, on all sort of subjects - history, music, movies, space, the Devil, mythology, science fiction, you name it - and have few comments in any of them. But my main one, the first one I began writing back in 2011, is almost at half a million views, so that's not bad.

I think your biggest problem, Trolls, is that maybe you post so many different journals that it's hard for people to keep up with. Like, for example, we have some similar tastes (ELO, Bowie) in some areas and not so much in others. And I'm still waiting for you to update your TZ thread (I'm still holding my five episodes at a time rule so I don't spam your thread so to speak). Then there are the threads that don't interest me at all. I'm guessing that would be true for everybody.

Then again, I keep wanting to go back to my own journal (The bag of garage goodies if you remember), but I haven't gotten off my butt yet, proverbially speaking.

No you're right of course, and I don't expect it. I was just explaining to bob how it is here. Certainly, someone interested in World War II may not be into vampires, and someone into animation might not have any interest in the history of Ireland, and I realise all of that. But I'm interested in all of them, so I just write what I like and if people read it that's fine, if not then it doesn't bother me (miserable ungrateful bastards! They'll all pay, you just see if they don't) but I'll still keep doing it. The trouble is I get ideas in my head and I literally say to myself "NO! You've enough to do! No more journals!"

Problem is, I never listen to myself. It's always been my trouble. I tried to talk to myself about it, but you know what I'm like, I never listen to me. I've told myself, if this all gets too much, don't come running to me. I'm done with me. :D

I'll get on those Twilight Zones real soon.

I have to admit I never delved deep into the Alan Parsons catalog but have started to more recently as I always peripherally liked them. I knew they were set up like Steely Dan with a few core members that brought in different musicians as needed. I do find that Alan Parsons absolutely requires repeat listening. I Robot has continued to grow on me the more I listen to it so maybe I need to go back and give the first album some more love as I dismissed it kind of quickly. Or based on your review maybe I will try Pyramid next.

Yeah I wouldn't try too hard to get into the first album. A lot of people love it but I found it a little inaccessible myself. Were I to suggest albums you could try I would go for Eve (the one that comes after I Robot), Ammonia Avenue, The Turn of a Friendly Card, Gaudi and his solo stuff is good too, at least the first two albums. Really there are no bad ones, but those would be in my top list, along with the likes of Eye in the Sky, Vulture Culture and of course Pyramid.

Eye in the Sky (1982)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...yeintheSky.jpg

If there's one album that's known outside of the fans of the Alan Parsons Project it's this one. Not only due to the fact that it has their two biggest hit singles on it, or the iconic cover, but mostly due to the adoption of the opening instrumental tracks by the Chicago Bulls American Football team, and indeed “Sirius” has been used many other times in many other situations. It's just that sort of piece. The album was also the only of theirs to hit the top ten and remains the biggest selling of their career.

It opens, as I noted just now, on “Sirius”, the instrumental introduction, as it were, to the big hit and title track, as deep, humming synth is joined by Ian Bairnson's softly rippling guitar, quickly adding David Paton's thumping bass and then the percussion from Stuart Elliott before Bairnson's riffs rise through the piece with sort of orchestral string accompaniment. It's a very short piece, less than two minutes, and on the back of ticking bass slips into the title track, which probably just about everyone knows by now. As usual, we have a panoply of vocalists, and “Eye in the Sky” features one of the most familiar in the shape of Eric Woolfson, also one of my favourites. The song is mid-paced, driven mostly on Bairnson's guitar, and is about I have not the slightest clue, but something to do with seeing through the plans of perhaps an unfaithful lover?

It's easy to see why it was such a hit. It's got a great hook, memorable melody and it's just about the right length, shaving the four-and-a-half minute mark (though that rise to six and half if it's paired, as it often was on radio, with “Sirius”). Basically it's a simple and very commercial, radio-friendly song with song fine riffs and a really nice guitar solo outro which takes us into “Children of the Moon”, the only song on the album on which both bass and vocals are handled by David Paton. It's a slightly more aggressive tune, reminding me very much of “Snake Eyes” from The Turn of a Friendly Card, with that already-recognisable motif used by the APP and some really nice almost laid back guitar as Bairnson tones it down a little. To be fair to Paton, he's a decent vocalist but doesn't have anything on Woolfson, Blunstone or Miles. Good backing vocals and again it has a nice hook, but the song is nowhere near as memorable as the title track. It's also another one that's hard to figure out what the hell it's about, though I suspect it might be a kind of legacy of Man on the Moon while people starve on Earth? Probably not, who knows?

There's some trumpet here, but as I see no credit for same I assume it might be on the synth, maybe the Fairlight computer? Mel Collins does contribute sax, but I'm fairly certain that's not sax there. Bairnson rips off a fine solo that ups the intensity of the song, then it drops into a sort of marching, processional percussion-led piece with again trumpety keyboards to lead it out in a fade alongside choral vocals and into the superb “Gemini”, where Chris Rainbow takes over the mike. This is a very gentle song, very much a ballad, drifting along like a leaf caught in a summer breeze, Rainbow attended by some truly lovely vocal harmonies. It's just a pity the song is so short, at just over two minutes the second-shortest, and the shortest non-instrumental on the album. There's an almost Wilson-like harmony going on here which really gives you a sense of layers in the song. Really nice.

Other than the two singles, the standout for me is also the longest track, not quite an epic but surely close to the longest single track the Alan Parsons Project have written up to now, leaving aside the suite from The Turn of a Friendly Card. Soft, expressive piano from Parsons puts me in mind of their classic “Shadow of a Lonely Man” from the previous Pyramid, and indeed there are harkbacks to that album, as I'll get into. Woolfson is back on the vocals, and has never sounded so good. This song just perfectly suits his sighing, breathing voice, and the orchestral arrangement in the midsection is to die for, but as I mentioned there are parallels to their 1978 album here, and when the tempo picks up after the first two verses the melody jumps right into that of “Pyramania”. It's impossible to disguise, and to me comes across as somewhat lazy, one of the reasons I can't love this song as much as I want to.

Trumpets again, what sounds like castanets, a thick orchestral synth and percussion bumping along as the tempo rises again, and Bairnson comes in with a fine solo to slow it all down again before the song returns with the final verse and orchestral fade. All in all, it's over seven minutes, but as I say, for me, it's marred by the somewhat uncomfortable sandwiching in of the melody from a previous album. Without that, this song would be pure Alan Parsons perfection, but with it, well, it just knocks it down a notch for me. And unfortunately, whether you have a problem personally with that or not, if you've enjoyed “Silence and I”, then make the most of it, because we've now reached that tipping point of which I often ramble on about, and from here, almost to the end, the album takes a serious turn for the ordinary, even dipping into the mediocre at times.

Those who know me will not be surprised to find that it's our old friend Lenny that kicks the decline of the album off, with the pretty godawful “You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned”, as the APP revert from a sophisticated prog/pop band to an out-and-out rock band, in the same annoying way Jeff Lynne insists on doing with ELO. If you've read my previous reviews, you'll know I have little time for Zakatek; I don't like his harsher singing style, I don't think he's a bad singer but he always grates on me. That said, this isn't the worst song (though I wish he'd sing the title instead of dropping the “s” - it's “fingers burned”, Lenny, not “finger!” Damn you. Anyway it's okay as I say, but it's fairly standard rock and roll, and does in fairness give the band a chance to kick out the stays and enjoy themselves, but coming on the heels of the sublime “Silence and I” it's just a real comedown for me. Good rocky solo from Bairnson, but even that can't make me more than shrug at this song.

It doesn't get all that much better as sixties star Elmer Gantry takes the mike for “Psychobabble”. The song again is poor, and the lyric is stupid – what the hell is “psychobabble rap”? If you're gonna say crap, say crap, and own it. Rap? Come on. It's poor, or as one of the priests in Father Ted once pointed out, it's shoddy work, Ted! Shoddy! I've never heard Gantry sing before, but he seems to come from the same school of rough singing as Zakatek, and if we're being totally classist and snobby here, you could see he and Lenny having gone to a national school while Colin Blunstone, Eric Woolfson, Chris Rainbow and even David Paton attended a posh public one. There's a hook in the song – in fairness, there was too in the previous one – and the semi-oriental tapped keyboard is interesting but ultimately I find it a little empty.

I never have a problem with APP instrumentals, and “Mammagamma” is no exception, though don't ask me what the title means. It does, however, again flirt closely – perhaps too closely – with one of the instrumentals on Pyramid, “Hyper-gamma spaces.” Given that they had two albums between this one and that, I really don't see why, if it's not simple coincidence, they keep looking back to that album. In terms of music though, this instrumental is kind of more in line with the later “Pipeline” from Ammonia Avenue, bouncing along with the classic APP motif sound, a mid-paced effort which to be entirely fair doesn't change much through its four-minute run. There's also what sounds like a violin, though once more I expect this is synthesised.

Sadly, it's back to Lennyland for the again seriously sub-standard “Step by Step”, a song which I don't consider worthy of being on this album at all, with its semi-soul groove, doo-wop style backing vocals and gurgling guitar. Thankfully, the guys do pull it out of the fire right at the end, literally saving the best for last as Colin Blunstone steps in to save the day with the other big hit, the reflective and melancholic “Old and Wise”, which sees a man on his death bed ("As far as my eyes can see/ There are shadows surrounding me”) looking back on his life and wondering how people will remember him when he's dead. ”To those I leave behind I want you all to know/ You've always shared my darkest hours/I'll miss you when I go”.

Sighing its way in on a soft little keyboard and piano line, the song is very laid back indeed and sung in a sad voice, yet with a certain sense of acceptance of the inevitable by Blunstone which really makes the song. It's enough to bring the tears, listening to him. The percussion is slow and measured, the APP resisting making it a slow heartbeat that winds down, instead making it the counterpoint of the song. Bairnson isn't quite conspicuous by his absence, but the song is very much driven on the synth and strings, riding along underneath Blunstone's yearning voice, and it ends on a big thundering drumroll as Mel Collins comes in to take the song home in a way I haven't heard since Hazel O'Connor's “Will You?” Superb ending, and really helps you to forget the, let's be honest, poor crop of songs that have preceded it after “Silence and I.”

TRACK LISTING

Sirius
Eye in the Sky
Children of the Moon
Gemini
Silence and I
You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned
Psychobabble
Mammagamma
Step by Step
Old and Wise

It might be ironic that the best known of the Alan Parsons Project's albums gets such short shrift from me, but I don't think it can be denied that this is almost, to use an old footballing cliche, a game of two halves. It opens in terrific style and keeps going, then dips sharply and finally rallies at the end. That gives us, in my opinion anyway, four out of ten songs that are maybe not poor, but certainly below the standard the first five set, and to me that's just not good enough to qualify an album as classic. I like Eye in the Sky – it was, after all, the first of their albums I bought – but I can't put it in the same realm as opuses such as Eve, The Turn of a Friendly Card, Ammonia Avenue or Gaudi.

For me, it's a good album that could have been a great album, but I find myself wondering did the boys run out of ideas and then have to stick on all that filler? Looking at their previous work, they didn't do that – there are few songs I would consider inferior to any of the other tracks on the first four albums – leaving aside Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which I am not that familiar with and don't particularly like all that much – and even where there are, they're usually one or maybe two. Four bad tracks on an album of ten is sort of unacceptable, so while classics like “Sirius”, the title track, “Silence and I” and “Old and Wise” make this album a worthy purchase, in this age of digital downloads, you could easily take half the album and leave the other half.

A real pity, as I wanted this to be one of my favourite APP albums, but I just can't stretch to that. It does have one of the coolest covers though, so there is that.

Rating: 7.5/10

That's interesting considering the Chicago Bulls American Football Team only existed in 1926. :D

Yeah yeah I knew someone would say oh they're a basketball or baseball or hit-the-other-person-hard-in-the-faceball team. Don't care. :D
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...tbU0WCmiWByuko

Interesting fact: Michael Jordan starred for the Chicago Bulls basketball team, winning six NBA titles in the 1990s. In between, he played baseball for a minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox American Baseball Team. He never, however, played professional football.

Source: The American Book of Duh! :D

Interesting fact: 0.000001% of Irish people give a **** about American Football.

Source: The Book of Trollheart, Volume XVII (Third edition).

I'm not disputing your factoid, :D but why Ireland in particular?

Cuz I'm Irish, and I'm the one who wrote it.

Ah, I see.

Why don't you put your location in your profile location field? Sometimes the geographical context of a post is useful to know.

Cos it's funnier and most people here know I'm a Paddy anyway. :)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ject_-_Eve.jpg
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

Who were the two on the album cover? Do we know?

Nope.

(Interviewer)
And lastly, were the models for the album cover of Eve made up to appear with lesions, or were these real cases?

(Alan Parsons)
Oh no, they were definitely made up. They were totally beautiful models in every way. I only met one of them, but they were the real thing. We did get some negativity about that cover -- some people said it was anti-feminist.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ureCulture.jpg
Vulture Culture (1984)

You know, scanning down through the track listing here, I've rethought my attitude towards this album. I used to consider it one of the weaker ones, but I think my attention was focused on the title track and the only instrumental on it, neither of which I liked. Now, when I consider all the excellent tracks on it, I think I was being unduly unfair to it, and I definitely have to re-evaulate it on that basis, so this review will be much more positive than I had originally intended. The idea on the album cover is interesting: while the title features a bird it's a reptile that gets on the cover, a depiction of the Ouroboros, the symbol for eternity and repetition, the snake swallowing its own tail and making an endless circle which is never broken. To some, that could I guess be taken as an admission that this music is merely recycled from previous albums, that the APP had run out of ideas, but that's not really true. There are some very interesting concepts explored on this album, and as I say, up to now I really haven't given it the credit it deserves.

So let's do that now.

It opens on what would be another minor hit for the guys, but their last ever, as “Let's Talk About Me” comes in very very softly, with taped conversation and humming synth before percussion and guitar snap in and the petulant voice of David Paton shouts “Let's talk about me for a minute”, in the persona of a man who never has a say in his relationship. The song rocks along nicely, a real bopper, and it's easy to see how this was chosen as a single, and why it was successful as such. Good backing vocals and sort of choir too; in the middle it drops down for a moment then picks right back up and Bairnson fires off a really angry solo following more speech, apparently supplied by media mogul Lee Abrams, a man almost single-handedly responsible for creating the AOR style of radio, so it says here.

Thick, almost electronica synth pulls in “Separate Lives” as Eric Woolfson laments on the breakup of a relationship, and though it's a semi-ballad it really isn't played like one, and has a great hook in the verse. There are some elements of “Sirius”, but I think in ways this kind of harks back to the debut, though with a very modern sound. The real ballad, the first of two, is “Days are Numbers (The Traveller”), but let's just pause here for a moment. I find it interesting, perhaps foolish, perhaps brave, that three of the tracks here all have titles possessed by other songs released around the same time. There's this one, a track on Chris de Burgh's Eastern Wind, the previous, which was a major hit for Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin, and while the penultimate one is called “Somebody Out There”, it's close enough to the huge hit by James Ingram and Linda Ronstadt not to... oh hold on. Both those last two have yet to be released when this album hits, so the only one of any consequence is the Chris de Burgh one, and who the hell gives a **** about Chris de Burgh? Carry on.

So “Days Are Numbers” comes in on a rippling guitar line, kind of strummed maybe, after some kind of announcement like maybe at a train station (the Traveller, geddit?) and lets us hear the voice of Eric Woolfson for the first time on the album. It's a sweet, bitter song of moving on, never finding a home, a man driven by desperate urges to keep travelling and never able to settle anywhere. In some ways it mimicks the themes of Bread's classic “Guitar Man”, though for vastly different reasons, and in others it's reminiscent -in lyrical content only - of Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound", but it's a lovely song, with a real aching vocal from Woolfson. There's a philosophical message in it when he sings ”Days are numbers, watch the stars/ We can only see so far/ Someday you'll know where you are.” and the sense of a man being driven on by forces he can't understand. There's a new addition to the project here, and David Cottle this time take sax duties as he belts out a fine solo near the end.

Woolfson is back then for “Sooner or Later”, in Parsons' own admission an attempt to replicate the success of “Eye in the Sky”, and yes, you can hear it, the rhythm and melody quite similar, but it's a great little song, again referencing a relationship, with a really nice guitar line from Bairnson as Woolfson cries ”What a price we pay for the things we say/ And the closer I get to you the further you move away.” Well, so much for my contention that the APP weren't specifically trying to write hits! A smooth, lyrical guitar solo from Bairnson backed up by some choral vocals and we're into the track that was skewing my judgement of this album, the title one, and guess who's behind the mike?

I think it's possible that this is the performance of his that annoys me the most about Lenny Zakatek. It certainly produced a lasting impression, since it seemed like the entire album was poor with my recollection of this, and that just isn't so. Reminds me of the opening of “Psychobabble” from Eye in the Sky, very much so really, with horn work from Cottle around the edges, but apart from his voice grating on me, there's something, I don't know – hollow? - about his delivery here on the verses at least. Maybe the production is off, though with Alan Parsons that's not really something you expect so maybe it's just him. The horns now give it a kind of jazzy, Mariachi feel, and while Paton's bass does its best to give the song heart, I just really don't like it. It seems to reference – along with the album title and cover I guess – the idea of “no friends in business” when Zakatek sings ”Vulture culture, never lend a loser a hand.” The funky little bass line at the end helps, but nah.

I'm not a fan of the sole instrumental either, which continues very much the Mexican style, with one spoken line in among the music, lots of handclaps, whistles, brass... yeah it's uptempo and breezy but it just isn't for me. But luckily those two tracks, the weakest of the whole album, are the only two weak ones, and it finishes strongly as “Somebody Out There” seems (to me at least) to tackle the idea of a doppelganger, an evil double who in mythology would go around doing things in your name and getting you into trouble.

Stephen King used this as the central theme for his novel The Outsider, but there it involved ritualistic murder (who woulda thunk it, huh?) whereas here it's more a sense of mischief as Colin Blunstone, of all people, takes the song – very definitely NOT a ballad – and puts a lot of anxiety and panic into it. It does however fool you into thinking that it is a ballad, as it starts on a rolling piano and a soft vocal from Colin, as he wonders if he's going crazy? ”Maybe I'm imagining the things they say about me/ Maybe there is really nothing there at all” but quickly comes to realise he has a double, and he's out to get him as the song speeds up – ”Somebody out there/Stolen your face/Somebody out there/Parked in your space/No reservation, he's taken your place!” There's an odd kind of mechanised bridge in the song, which works well into creating the whole sense of paranoia it spreads, and the hurried, almost rushed tempo adds to this. There is respite when Bairnson comes in with a soothing guitar solo, but quickly we're off again as Blunstone chases his double, trying to make people see he's not mad after all.

We end then on the second ballad, the wonderful “The Same Old Sun”, where we welcome Woolfson back for his final performance on this album. It's just beautiful, and I haven't heard one as nice since, except maybe Alan's solo effort “Oh Life! (There Must Be More)”. With its ringing piano opening and its lush orchestration it builds to a superb climax as Woolfson faces another crisis in a broken relationship – ”There's a smile on my face but I'm only pretending”, I personally believe this is not just a lover left, but having left this mortal coil, and maybe he's sitting at her grave asking her ”Tell me what to do/Now there's nobody watching over me”. Sad, moving and a great closer to an album that deserves more respect than I had given it up to now.

TRACK LISTING

Let's Talk About Me
Separate Lives
Days Are Numbers (The Traveller)
Sooner or Later
Vulture Culture
Hawkeye
Somebody Out There
The Same Old Sun

Though this album was the last to chart for the Alan Parsons Project, and the last to give them any sort of hit singles, they continued to turn out consistently excellent albums until their final disbanding in 1987 as Woolfson and Parsons went their separate ways, the former to a solo career that has so far spanned four albums, the latter to produce what would have been the band's last album, Freudiana, released in 1990 and then a series of musicals culminating in the final collection of Parsons tunes that never made it onto any album, Alan Parsons That Never Was, mere months before his untimely death from cancer in 2009.

In terms of poor albums, then, I can confidently say that the APP really never quite had one. The debut was a little shaky, I felt, but after that – and with the benefit of hindsight and listening to and reviewing them again – there isn't one I wouldn't be happy to play, though a few tracks might be skipped on Eye in the Sky, making it, paradoxically perhaps, their most famous and successful and at the same time their weakest album, in my opinion.

But this one has, after thirty years and more, finally regained its place among my favourite APP albums, and I'm happy to welcome it back again.

Rating: 9.2/10

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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