WALK INTO LIGHT

Ian Anderson's obsession with early eighties' synths and drum machines reached it's climax with the 1982 Tull album Under Wraps and this solo outing from Anderson titled Walk Into Light. I don't resent Anderson's gravitation towards the music machines of the New Wave, but I do resent his sticking his nose into a musical area that he didn't help to form and develop. If I had to guess, Chrysalis label mates Ultravox would seem to be the prime motivation for Ian's new sound but you could toss in everyone from the Eurhythmics to Erasure as influences.

This outing finds Anderson paired up only with future Annie Lennox keyboardist Peter-John Vettese, while Anderson mans a Lynn drum machine and sampled bass to go along with his occasional and rare sprinkling of acoustic and electric guitars and his ever present flute which, strangely, seems right at home with plastic synth tones.

The songs themselves are not bad and some would have made excellent Tull material if they were written and recorded some 5-8 years earlier, especially "Made In England", Trains", and "Black and White Television." What is probably most annoying to me is the lack of pure musical experimentation or flight of fancy soloing that would have at least shook up the songs from their laid back pacing and carefully measured delivery. Anderson was still in fine voice at this juncture and thoughts of what could have been seem to haunt this era of his work.

To conclude, Walk Into Light would not have been comparable to the artist's work that helped to influence it. In a perfect world where Jethro Tull had never existed before Ian's first solo outing, Walk Into Light would have had no place next to the output from Ultravox, Eurhythmics and Erasure simply because it was not really Anderson's forte and, more importantly, it was simply not as good. 2 stars.

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