RA

This album should have been great. It begins with a great opening track "Mountaintop and Sunrise: Communion with the Sun", a classic late-1970s progressive rock song. It ends with an 18-minute epic. There are some great guitar solos, and some excellent musical sections. However, the album falls flat, badly. First of all, the ruined epic: On top of what would have been a good-to-excellent composition, Rundgren adds a narrator telling the tale of the main character in a FAKE Scottish accent (on "Singring and the Glass Guitar"). It is unlistenable (except perhaps once, or for a good laugh at a party!). Only about seven minutes of music from this 18-minute epic are NOT ruined by this narration. This was totally unnecessary, as the listener can easily get enough of the story from the regular lyrics (and/or Rundgren could have simply typed the story on the album). AND, it is a really unintelligent story in the first place. Between the opener and the closer are a collection of tunes that border on cheesy for different reasons. Some are just sappy ("Eternal Love"), others are over the top silly ("Hiroshima") while the rest are just not that musical. It is almost as if Rundgren decided to sabotage this album out of spite or something. At the very least, the result is that there is only about 15 minutes of decent music on this 45-minute album (the opener, and parts of the other tunes). Really disappointing waste of great potential. I give this album 3.3 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which translates as low 2 PA stars.

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