AMMONIA AVENUE

From their debut to The Turn of a Friendly Card, the Alan Parsons Project was producing pop-friendly prog rock; on Eye In the Sky, they crossed the border into rock-tinged prog pop. Ammonia Avenue finds their sound leaning harder on their poppier tunes, and with less in the way of progressive flourishes than ever before.

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.