TREVOR RABIN

I can easily classify as one of those Yes nerds with unrealistic expectations, so let's do this review from that perspective: It sucks! No! I'm just kidding! It's actually very good! Perhaps not on the first listen as much due to the album's diversity, but like any good album, repeat listens have been required to catch it all for what it is- a bunch of Trevor's songs.

After the first couple of tracks that have all the satisfying flavours of Big Generator/Talk and Union era Yes (and get revisited throughout the album) we move into the 'other styles' Trevor was talking about. Most surprisingly perhaps are the fierce chicken plucking tracks and even one track that is downright country western- but not to worry, Trevor screws around with them so much - in a good way- as to satisfy most prog fans.

There are plenty of jazzy moments as well...and bluesy moments. Trevor totally owns all of these moments. His vocals are satisfying to listen to - he can still really belt it out and serve it all up with his own winsome style. His ceaselessly good....no, great guitar work dominates the album- and it's downright awe inspiring. This album reminded me of how much I miss Trevor's guitar work. There's steel string acoustics in some songs too.

Overall it's a pleasantly surprising energetic and radiant album. It feels a bit disparate or project-like as solo albums often tend to be. He's not the next Sting or Phil Collins- two examples of singers who broke free of famous bands and styled their own stand-alone brand. Mostly Rabin comes across as a hard-working remarkably great guitarist and creative songwriter/producer who sings well and he does it all in good fun.

Trevor obviously enjoyed creating this album. That gets communicated well in the final product. You can also feel the ghost of Chris Squire hanging over this album, and Alan White in parts too. Open minded Yes fans should enjoy what Trevor offers- cool, twisty, catchy songs sprinkled with proggy pop delights and sensibilities.

"Rio" is a very decent job; almost everything recorded by Rabin, amazing! I always like this kind of one-man album. You can hear reminiscences of  Yes Trevor's era; I don't know why, but it gives me some "Lion King" vibes in some of the moments too haha.

And what else? Excellent interpretations, even some bluegrass in "Goodbye", a cappella experiments in "Tumbleweed" (the arrangement sounds like Moon Safari to me, a lot), classic rock riffs and pleasant atmospheres.

"Oklahoma" what an epic track; I think it should close the album, the ending is a bit weak, but overall? a nice album. Good job Trevor!

Anyway, let's not abandon ourselves to that first impression so easily and without a fight to try and penetrate other less evident treasures that may be hidden here. The vocal arrangements, and the leads by Rabin himself, are simply great, if sometimes crashed in less than desirable moments of pop cliché. The same goes for the synth "orchestrations", which make for a very solid sound production, atracting and involving the listener in the rich and varied shift of atmospheres that defines this record.

Final word for the guitar job, of course. The variety is awesome, as the dexterity of the player. You will find not only electric, but also great acoustic workouts (Push, Oklahoma), even a fine slide intervention in the best Steve Howe tradition (Paradise). Also the country-flavoured Goodbye seems like an unmistakable nod to Steve. But if you want to cut the chase because you are a fan of Trevor the electric guitar hero, then go straight to Thandi, and you will find the pyrotechnics our hero delivers with taste and profusion.

If you admire the vocalist instead, then go to Tumbleweed, with great lead performance and beautiful harmonies. In every case, I suggest to avoid Big Mistakes and Egoli, if it happened to be you were somewhat pop intolerant.

The closer, Toxic, sounds like a failed outtake from Big Generator to me, but, even so, I like this whole affair.

Trevor Rabin is an excellent multi-instrumentist, known mainly for his guitar work with the YES, but is also an excellent pianist as can be heard on his Jacaranda, that's a very good album.

So why? Why taking the risk of jeopardizing a honest solo career releasing an album of demos of a quality so bad that I could re-record it at home?

The first minute of "Hold On" is already enough. I have heard David Gilmour singing la-la-la on a demo version of Comfortably Numb, as well as the Roger Waters's first demo of Money...qat least they sung tuned. Trevor tries to reach the high notes of Jon Anderson, and he doesn't succeed. "Changes" is a little better, at least it sounds close enough to the version on 90125 even if the chorus is different. It was likely at a more advanced stage of development.

"Moving In" ended to become "Hold On", but the chorus sounds like an American longhair rock band. Partially Interesting as a curiosity.

The it comes "Would You Feel My Love". I don't know if it was written for 90125. Luckily, for what I know, it remained unreleased.

At some point, Rabin remembers his Sout-African roots and "Where Will You Be" features "afro" percussion. In some ways it reminds to some of Jon's solo works. There's a similar track on Olias of Sunhillow, too.

Another acoustic and unnecessary demo. "Owner Of A Lonely Tonsil" I'd say.

"Walls" is a proper song. At least one. Not a masterpiece for sure, very 80s but at least it's a complete song. It sounds like the soundtrack of an American teens movie, and sad to say, it's one of the best things that can be found on this album.

One minute of Mussorsky's Promenade? After a full live album by Emerson Lake and Palmer 30 years before? Let's go ahead...

From Big Generator, "Love Will Find A Way" misses Jon's voice, but at least is not too different from the known version.

Rick Wakeman nicknamed "Onion" the album where "Miracle Of Life" is taken from. Not a bad song, and I don't dislike the album. One of the listenable songs, but not more than a curiosity for who already knows it.

The album is (finally) closed by a version of Cinema very different from the final version appeared on 90125. It ends to be the best track of the whole album as it's a completely different song.

So why??? Why should one purchase an album like this? Would anybody download it if it was a Bandcamp's "name your price"?

Don't be fooled by the poorness of this release. Trevor Rabin has done much better things. Try Jacaranda, instead of this one to hear how he can compose and play.

Rabin must have selected some of the tracks as a way of communicating how little they changed once they entered the Yes creative process. The 1991 demo of "Where Will You Be," is essentially an instrumental version of the song that would appear on Talk. "Walls," which would precede "Where Will You Be" on that same album, has the same music, lyrics, and arrangement as the canonical version, but here Roger Hodgson, not Jon Anderson, sings the harmonies. Anderson's cool vocal addition to the coda of the Talk version ("oh, this indecision?") is of course missing, but little else is. Similarly, the "Love Will Find a Way" demo is very close to the version that was finally released on Big Generator. And while "Miracle of Life" is explicitly identified as a "demo" on the CD tray liner, it sounds more like an early rough mix (sans Anderson's vocals and a few of the lyrics) of the track which would eventually appear on Union. By the time this mix was made, the sound effects, backing-vocal samples, and even the mandolin section were already in place.

But most of the songs which were demoed for Yes's 90125 are a different story. For example, the track labeled "Cinema" is entirely distinct from the same-titled song on 90125. This "Cinema" would later be remade by Rabin, Chris Squire, Tony Kaye, and Alan White as "Take it Easy," which itself would be rejected for inclusion on 90125. Confused yet? The liner notes state that Rabin wished this album to illustrate the creative process, and thus two recordings, the first with just voice and acoustic guitar, are spliced to create the "Owner of a Lonely Heart" demo here. In some ways, it makes sense that the unnecessarily-hair-rock pre-chorus in this version was removed for 90125, but it kind of has a fun, Loverboy or early Bon Jovi vibe. The opening track, "Hold On," is spliced together the same way. But what's interesting is that only half of what would become the "Hold On" of 90125 is in the demo here. Most of the rest of the final song is taken from the macho-rock "Moving In." Wisely, they excised the lyrics (e.g., "I'm moving' my love into you?"). And then there's "Would You Feel My Love," which they wisely excised in its entirety.

90124 also contains a demo of "Changes," to which White and Anderson would later make significant contributions. But unlike "Hold On," "Changes still retains its AOR feel in the final version. Finally, there's the song "Promenade," short but enjoyable Rabin arrangement of a Mussorgsky excerpt.

Except to hard-core Yes or Rabin fans, this compilation is completely non-essential. And yet it's fun to put on once in a while, for the very purpose Rabin intended: it's an enjoyable window into his creative process.

At 55 minutes, Yes guitarist Trevor Rabin's Can't Look Away was part of the trend: at the same time older people were bemoaning the shortening of the youth attention span, albums had gotten a good 15 minutes longer during the 1980s. And as Rabin's fourth studio LP demonstrates, more isn't necessarily better. Side One of the original vinyl is serviceable AOR - - with the exception of the wonderful "Sorrow (Your Heart)," which somehow didn't click with radio programmers despite at least some promotion by Elektra. I'm not sure why it didn't receive an official single release in the US; not only is it very catchy, it seems like it would have been timely insofar as it related to South African Apartheid.

Anyway, after the first three songs - - the Apartheid-related "I Can't Look Away," the lead single "Something to Hold on To," and "Sorrow," the quality wanes, and by the end of the first side, Rabin's run out of hooks. Three of the Side Two songs are interesting instrumentals - - they don't simply sound like arena-rockers without the singing. But the other four tunes are schlocky AOR, at least compared to the tunes on the obverse. That's despite the fact that Rabin, who wrote seven of the songs himself, involved co-composers on the other six. Bob Ezrin, who had produced Peter Gabriel's debut as well as the career best-selling albums of Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Pink Floyd, co-wrote three songs, and former Slapp Happy member Anthony Moore contributes lyrics to two. Rabin's father Geoffrey and former Rabbit producer Patric van Blerk are also credited on one track each.

Rabin was a relatively young singer/multi-instrumentalist and a decent singer when he joined Yes in 1983, and many fans viewed him as an interloper who pushed the band away from prog-rock and toward pop-rock. In 1997, newcomer Billy Sherwood was perceived in much the same way. The comparison is superficial at best, but Rabin and Sherwood have a significant similarity as solo artists. Neither needs much help in the studio, as each is sufficiently talented as a songwriter, singer, producer, and instrumentalist. Each has contributed significantly to the Yes discography (most notably, to 90125, Big Generator, and Talk in Rabin's case, and Keys to Ascension 2** and Open Your Eyes in Sherwood's). But neither has produced a solo album that holds my interest from start to finish. In Sherwood's case, it may be a certain sterility and monotony in his sound, and in Rabin's, it's his AOR fare.

In terms of Can't Look Away, I do give Rabin specific credit for not turning in an Eric Johnson or Joe Satriani album. First of all, those guys, and a few others, were already there and were busy doing that in 1989. Second, Rabin is capable of writing and singing accessible pop-rock songs, so why not?

Can't Look Away is a three-star album, though among three-star albums it's below average. Nonetheless, there are some good AOR tunes here, a few interestingly odd instrumentals - - and "Sorrow (Your Heart)," which stands as one of the most enjoyable Rabin songs I've ever heard.

====

*certainly not a Yes album, but like Can't Look Away, it fits the pattern.

**primarily, but importantly, as a producer.

Anyway, I was a little disappointed upon my first listen to the LP. The songs were familiar to me: "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Love Will Find a Way," plus four tunes from Rabin's recent solo LP Can't Look Away - - which I assume was being promoted via the Westwood One show. The problem? Rabin and company (Lou Molino (drums), Mark Mancina (keyboards and backing vocals), and Jim Simmons (bass and backing vocals)) were obviously playing along to prerecorded tapes. The female vocals on the first two tracks ("Cover Up" and "Sorrow (Your Heart)") are lifted directly off of Can't Look Away, while there are at least three Trevor Rabin's singing on the third song, "Love Will Find a Way." (At one point, at the end of the first verse, there's an error, as the live Rabin sings "I don't need to be," while the prerecorded ones are singing "It's so hard to be." This raises the possibility that the keyboardist was triggering samples, in which case my "prerecorded tapes" assumption is incorrect.) Later, when the crowd sings the verses on "Owner of a Lonely Heart," it sounds like four or five tracks of the same four or five people singing in the studio (including Rabin himself). And somehow they all knew all of the lyrics! Plus it was evident even in 1990 that some of the synth parts were MIDI sequences.

Despite my complaints, when I had the opportunity 25 years later to buy the CD, I shelled out the cash.

The songs on Live in LA that weren't on the Westwood One record are "Heard You Cry Wolf," from Rabin's 1981 album Wolf; "Changes;" from 90125; and three songs from his then-current album: "Can't Look Away," an medley of "Etoile Noir" and "Eyes of Love," and "Sludge," which includes an interpolation of Gentle Giant's "Just the Same."

Come to think of it, the album might've been called Just the Same rather than Live in LA - - it's a collection of too-faithful renditions of most of Rabin's best 1980s material. On much of the album the instrumentation, in addition to the vocals, is note-perfect; I'd be willing to believe that any imperfections were fixed in the studio. But I guess that this has to be looked at as a promotional item as much as a live album: it was meant to be heard once on the radio to entice you to go to the store and buy Can't Look Away. And actually, that's my suggestion too.

Some Demos are interesting, like the Demos for "Hold On" and "Moving In", with parts of both of them which were later used for the final version of the song called "Hold On" from the "90125" album, The Demo for "Changes" shows the song without the contributions that Alan White (the instrumental intro) and Jon Anderson (the final lyrics) made for that song in the "90125" album.

"Where Will You Be" is an instrumental version of the same song which was recorded for the "Talk" album, very similar to the final product. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" shows the song without the final arrangements and with different lyrics and also lacking the contributions that Jon Anderson (additional lyrics) and Chris Squire (bass guitar arrangements) made to the final song which was recorded for the "90125" album. In one interview Rabin said that producer Trevor Horn had a songwriter`s credit in this song more for his production and arrangements for the song and as a "thank you" gesture for thinking that the song could be a Hit Single than for really contributing something else to the song.

"Walls" has Roger Hodgson (one of the co-writer of this song) singing backing vocals, with some arrangements which sound very influenced by Hodgson, but anyway sounding very similar to the final version which was recorded by YES for the "Talk" album. This Demo lacks a brief section that maybe was Jon Anderson`s final contribution to the song (a brief lyric that he sings in the final version).

"Love Will Find a Way" is a bit differerent to the final version which was recorded for the "Big Generator" album, lacking the strings arrangement used as an intro and the harmonica solo used in the final version, but it still is very similar to the final product. The same is for "Miracle of Life", which was recorded for the "Union" album, having some different arrangements but sounding very similar anyway to the final product.

"Don`t Give in" (track number 11 in this album) is a different version of "Make It Easy", a song which was included in the "Yesyears" Box Set, with different lyrics and arrangements.

This "90124" compilation of Demos is interesting. Maybe it is more interesting to listen to the changes that the contributions of the other members of YES made to the final versions of the songs which appeared in the albums which the band recorded with Trevor Rabin as a member of the band. It also shows how important was Rabin for the new sound of the band after Steve Howe left the band in early 1981, and also shows why Chris Squire and Alan White asked Rabin to form a band, because they liked his songs and musical ideas to re-establish YES as a band in the eighties with a more accessible style of music.

This album, his fourth as soloist, was released almost at the same time as the "Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe" album, an album which Jon Anderson recorded with those other then former members of the band, being tired of the music direction that YES was having then. YES lost Anderson since late 1988, so the band was on hiatus, without a lead singer. So, Rabin took the opportunity to record this new solo album titled "I Can`t Look Away", maybe looking for a new chance as a soloist in 1989.

This is a good album, with songs mostly composed and arranged in the Pop Rock music trends of the late eighties, with some of them still having some Progressive rock influences. Unfortunately, the album is not very consistent as a whole and some songs really are not very interesting.

Among the best songs in this album, they are "I Can`t Look Away", "Something to Hold On To" (which became a Hit Single and maybe it is th best song from this album), "Sorrow (your heart)" (very influenced by Souht African music), "Cover Up", and "Promises" Coincidentaly, all these songs are the first five songs in the album, and with "Sludge", all are the strongest from the album. With the exception of "Promises", all these songs were also included in his live album titled "Live in L.A." which was released until 2003. That album has all these songs played better in concert.

Unfortunately, the rest of the songs are not as good, being mostly very Pop Rock ballads (like "I Didn`t Think It Would Last", "Hold On to Me", and "I Miss You Now"), plus a "power ballad" which sounds like being very influenced by FOREIGNER ("Eyes of Love") with a guitar riff very influenced by that band`s guitarist (Mick Jones). "Etoile Noir" and "The Cape" are instrumental pieces of music, not very interesting for my taste.

So, Rabin left at the first half of the album the best songs, with the rest of the songs (with the exception of the heavy instrumental titled "Sludge") not being as interesting. The album only reached the number 111 in the "Billboard 200" chart in the U.S., so it was not very successful in commercial terms, even with the very eighties production. But "Something to Hold On To" became a Hit Single, reaching the number three in the U.S. Billboard charts, and having a video which was played on TV.

The recording and mixing of the album is very good. Rabin recorded very good lead and backing vocals, and his guitar playing is very good, having some very good guitar solos in some songs. So, this is a good quality album which could have been more interesting for some of Rabin`s fans and some fans of the Pop Rock market.

YES`s drummer Alan White appears in two songs, but in this album his drums playing style is not very easy to be identified, having to compete with some programmed drum machines.

This album was the last released Rabin`s solo album until 2012, when he released his album titled "Jacaranda", after recording a lot of soundtrack albums for films since leaving YES in mid 1995.