THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT

I want to preface this review by stating I am looking at the 1987 remix, which I believe to be the definitive listening for this record.

For a debut album's worth, this certainly is one that feels the most peculiar within the APP discography. Many of APP's workings are based around literature, or concepts inspired by literature. This is no exception, and the inspiration goes to, well, Edgar Allan Poe, a writer that needs no introduction to those that have read at least a little bit. Each of the 7 tracks are based around one of his stories, as opposed to what their next album, I Robot, would do by having most (or the entire story) within the album. For this review I decided to go to my school's library and check out a collection of stories from Poe, and so far I have read pretty much every story that this album tells, except for The Cask Of Amontillado and To One In Paradise.

Musically speaking, this album is just excellent. The best thing I would say about this record is certainly Alan Parsons' production, though that could be said with everything he had a hand in. Despite this, the heights I would say are the more symphonic stylings that persist within this record. They would move away with this more symphonic prog outlook in future releases, only really bringing it back up with The Turn Of A Friendly Card (which funnily enough also has a song based around a Edgar Allan Poe work). I feel like if they would do these songs, without the symphonic dramatics, they would fall a bit flat, but they certainly allow the ideas of Edgar's work to shine by adding such dramas into the mix.

This record also includes some of my favorite APP tracks yet. Of course the big 15 minute epic of The Fall Of The House Of Usher is a favorite of mine, being this vibrant and haunting classical melody, as well as (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether being this groovy rock song that is both introspective in backing, but lively in front values. I would also point my attention to The Raven, which I think is just a superb song, combining funky pop sounds with magnificent prog to what I think is a very amazing and introspective jam. Certainly a highlight to what this album holds.

I believe there are no weak tracks, or at least no outright bad tracks. Perhaps maybe The Cask Of Amontillado and To One In Paradise, but even then they get quite the job done as very pretty tracks within the strong listing of songs here. Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson certainly know how to write some fantastic stuff.

However, what I do find weakening about this record is less of the music, and more of the general lyricism that is found here. I certainly do agree with Billy Altman of Rolling Stone magazine that this album does not quite capture the same darkness and gothic ideals that a lot of Poe's stories deliver, especially in lyrics. The only track to really come close is that of The Tell-Tale Heart, and even then that song is a bit too upbeat for a story about a guy killing an old man (though I guess if The Beatles made songs about murder with the same upbeat tunes then I guess APP should as well). Now, as of writing this, I think it'd be cool to hear some of these songs in a more gothic rock or dark cabaret sound. Imagine a cover of The Raven from a band like Cocteau Twins or The Cure, or a cover of The Tell- Tale Heart by someone like Will Wood. Honestly, I think that'd be pretty awesome.

Some of the lyrics feel out of place too, or even strangely obtuse to the source material. While I love Usher and Doctor Tarr, even I can admit they just feel odd in the songwriting. Doctor Tarr feels more like an ad for the services provided by Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, which I guess isn't too weird as in the original story the head of the Asylum, Monsieur Maillard, mentioned the revolutionary method of the two scientists, but merely only briefly which causes the unnamed narrator to try and find writings made by the two unknown scientists at the end, but even still lines like "You're in need of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" and "Just what you need to make you feel better" feels quite weird in context, even weirder than the stuff in the original story.

Usher is even weirder, having no lyrics, which to me seems like an odd choice. I guess the band wanted to create a track based around the vibes of the original story, but it kinda makes the epic feel out of place with the rest of the track listings, despite how great it is. I obviously do not hate these tracks, or think they are at all weak, but they certainly prove that for all their worth, I do not think Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson have what it takes to do something within the macabre.

This album is in an odd limbo in the APP discography. The sound of it is quite different from stuff like I Robot or Turn Of The Friendly Card, and it is a record that has an aura that feels out of tune with the works of Poe, but in tune within them as well oddly enough. But, no matter how you cut it, this certainly is not a bad album, far from it. Certainly not the best APP album, or the best record to come out of the 1976 prog mythos, but what you do get out of this is some great music, and a picture of the evolving progression that prog rock was taking at the time. It's mysterious, it's imaginative, and while it might not fully grasp the papers of Edgar Allan Poe's works, they certainly achieve something in spirit. I recommend this to those who enjoy a more pop prog sound, but also enjoy some symphonics as well. It is an album worth exploring if you might so desire.

Best tracks: The Raven, (The System of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, The Fall of the House of Usher

Weak tracks: The Cask of Amontillado, To One In Paradise

Starting with "A Dream Within A Dream" and "The Raven" Alan Parsons set his style for the rest of the discography. Then "The Tell-Tale Heart" breaks in (with an annoying and weird "aaaah", I always hated that haha) and the beautiful ballad "The Cask of Amontillado". Everything is what you have listened in better known albums like Eye In The Sky, the essence of Alan Parsons Project is something unique.

The most impressive part is the suite called "The Fall of the House of Usher", combining experimental art rock with orchestral sections, bringing some chaos to the record that "To One in Paradise" restore with an idyllic soft song.

If you want some accessible art rock but different and varied at the same time, this is a good choice.

This is the band's most popular album, with, I think, I Robot and The Turn Of The Friendly Card being close behind. Unlike those albums, Eye In The Sky is more or less a standardized artsy?poppy soft rock album for the 80s. Now admittedly, I am actually fine with this direction Alan Parsons Project takes here, they definitely already had a knack for pop music so this isn't bad to me, but you can definitely tell these songs were kinda made for the radios and single sales.

The best way to describe this album in my opinion is that it is a good pop album, but not really the best Alan Parsons Project album. I think the best aspect of the album is obviously Alan Parsons production, as expected with anything he has a hand in, and also the first side of the album. I think Sirius through Silence And I are some of the best music the band has created, with the more fun pop comings of Eye In The Sky and Gemini, to the more overtly art rock Children Of The Moon and Silence and I. Silence and I is especially my favorite track off this album, due to its power and emotion that builds throughout its 7 minute run.

However, the album definitely showcases its potholes with the second side. Unlike the moody, and more artistic first side, side B is a lot more basic (for lack of a better term) in terms of music, having a lot of songs that are kinda your usual soft rock flair from the 80s. I am not that offended by the second side, mostly since I grew up in a more pop loving household so the sound is a bit more well known for my tastes, but some of these songs I feel just aren't really that good, especially You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned and Step by Step. I also feel like compared to the first side it just doesn't stack as well. I mean how are you gonna compare the slightly lackluster instrumental Mammagamma with the pretty and somber Gemini?

I would be a lot more forgiving if this wasn't an Alan Parsons Project album, but since it is, and since this band has made some really great music especially on their second sides (IE The Fall Of The House Of Usher suite and The Turn Of The Friendly Card suite) I feel like I can give this album it's dues and critiques, especially since after this album the band kinda starts to sound like they are constantly trying to do what this album does, instead of trying new and fresh ideas like they did before. Well, the second side isn't all that bad, Old and Wise is on it and that song is a fantastic closer in my humble opinion.

Again, this is not a bad album, but for Alan Parsons Project standards it is kinda lukewarm. There are definitely a lot of good moments on here, but the very top heavy song structure, plus the very middle of the road songs on the second side just doesn't get me wanting to return to it all that much. If you like the more pop stylings of Yes or Genesis in the 80s then this isn't a bad record to put on your shelf, but if you want something more proggy like what this band did before, you'd best be looking somewhere else.

In particular, La Sagrada Familia works in elements of traditional Spanish music and bombastic opera, offering a richer range of sounds than the band had offered since at least as far back as Turn of a Friendly Card. Paseo De Gracia, likewise, incorporates Spanish guitar to add an air of drama to proceedings.

It's the pop numbers in the middle which are shakier. Too Late has a bit of bite to it, Closer To Heaven is fine, but Standing on Higher Ground, Money Talks, and Inside Looking Out are lacklustre and overlong.

As such, I'm inclined to say that whilst Gaudi is an improvement over Stereotomy - in my view their weakest album of the 1980s - it's not a radical one. It may be that, starting and finishing strong as it does, it leaves the listener with a better impression than it perhaps deserves, since thinking back on it you'll remember the good moments and overlook the weaker patches. Call it three and a half stars, rather than a return to the four star standards of their better works.

It's a compact, affordable way to get the complete run of releases from the band, all sounding delightful. Why only four stars, then? Well, it's largely because the Project was very much a four-star band at best. They produced some good albums, they produced some which were only lukewarm, but to my ears at least they never produced an album which was truly great; four stars was very much their ceiling.

At the same time, because of the modest pricing of this CD set it's prompted me to finally sit down and listen to some Project albums I never previously got around to - all of which have their finer moments here and there - which I might not otherwise have done. So if you want a one-purchase-and-done APP collection, this is what you want.

It's the sort of thing which wouldn't sound amiss on the same playlist as mid-1980s era Genesis, and if you like that, you'll probably like this album, though as with its two predecessors you'll only like it; you won't love it, you won't rave about it, and whilst this incarnation of the Project might share the same bill as the contemporary version of Genesis, that's the big difference.

Sure, if you specifically want prog then neither act is going to offer you much - but if you come to this from a pop perspective, Genesis at the height of their pop period were simply more exciting and refreshing than the Alan Parsons Project were. For that matter, they did at least have little departures to offer like Home By the Sea/Second Home By the Sea; that's not the case here. Even if you personally don't like mid-1980s Genesis, you can imagine how someone might be very enthusiastic about them.

I can't think very many people at all are enthused by the Alan Parsons Project's mid-1980s pop albums, by comparison, and this might be my least favourite of the Ammonia Avenue/Vulture Culture/Stereotomy triptych, with Limelight in particular being a big cheesy torch song which does nothing for me. The long instrumental Where's the Walrus is the closest thing we get here to any sort of progressive flourish, and perhaps saves the album from being a write-off in my eyes, but it's barely clinging to a three-star rating whereas I'd put both of its predecessors at the low end of three and a half stars. It may well be the group's weakest effort, though Eve gives it a run for its money in that race.

If you liked the art pop stylings of Ammonia Avenue, that's not necessarily such a bad thing - you'll probably like this one. (I particularly enjoyed Let's Talk About Me, which has a bit more bite than any other song on this album or the previous one.) On the other hand, you probably won't do much more than like it. There's something to be said for making a choice between being loved by a few or liked by many - but it feels like in the mid-1980s the Alan Parsons Projects were choosing between being loved by a few or liked by a few, and chose the latter.

Whether this is a disaster or merely a further musical evolution is a matter of perspective. If you slide Ammonia Avenue in alongside the art pop produced by prog veterans in the 1980s, like post-Abacab Genesis or 90125-era Yes, it's a more than acceptable album in that style. But if you're only interested in the prog side of the Project, and wish their musical evolution had gone in exactly the opposite direction, you're not going to keen on this.

For my part, I fall into the former camp, but I would say that the album is pleasant, enjoyable, nice, entertaining... all those lukewarm second-tier praise words. It's not gripping in the way a really excellent album, whether prog or pop, can be.

In the long run, this led to a new deal, and a happier Parsons and Woolfson going away to put out The Turn of a Friendly Card, which would be something of a return to form after the patchy Eve. As for The Sicilian Defence, it was stuck in the vault, eventually getting an official release as part of the Complete Albums Collection boxed set. Previously, Alan Parsons had been very against it getting a release, though Woolfson had put out one of its tracks as a bonus track on something, and Parsons eventually relented for the sake of making sure that box was as complete as the name implied.

So, what do you get on here? There's an extent to which this is "APP Goes Tangerine Dream", with synth-based tracks sounding much like the output of Edgar Froese's merry band (or, for that matter, Jean-Michel Jarre) as of the close of the 1970s. Other tracks resort to acoustic piano instrumentals, played in a charming and graceful fashion. Indeed, initially the tracks seem to alternate synthesiser/acoustic/synthesiser/acoustic - in keeping with the concept of a chess game with alternating sides taking their turns - though the pattern ends up breaking by the fifth track. (The chess moves in the title tracks are legitimate, and to my eyes set up a situation where black ends up in quite a strong position - it's the "Classical Variation" on the Sicilian Defence, hence perhaps the classical music influences on the instrumentals which get teased out as the album progresses.)

Certainly, though it was blitzed through in three days as a contractual obligation piece, there was at least some effort put into this: if you just want to fill 40 minutes of tape there's faster and easier ways of doing it, after all, but I guess professional pride (and the risk that the record company might actually call their bluff and release the thing) forced Parsons and Woolfson to produce something which had just a little polish to it. That said, there's a certain repetitiveness to the whole thing - each track is fairly clearly based on a fairly limited set of musical ideas which the duo vamp on until they've hit enough time.

If you are hoping for something like the Project's other albums, you can more or less rule it out - at most this is a collection of sketches of tunes which might have become Alan Parsons Project albums given a little more time to percolate and develop. On the other hand, if the idea of a more raw, stripped-back approach of just Parson and Woolfson noodling through some musical ideas appeals, then there's something to enjoy here.