STRICTLY INC.

This is Tony Banks best solo album after his debut A Curious Feeling. Actually I did not expect much from this album since I never really like Wang Chung, and the colaboration between their lead singer and Banks seemed quite unlike to succeed. But it worked! After the hideous The Fugitive, the only average Bankstatement and the good, but uneven Still, it looks like Genesis keyboards player finally found a good balance between his hability to deliver great melodies and his ambition to write simpler, catchy tunes. All songs are good. Of course I don't have to praise his best latter day composition, Island In The Darkness. All the other reviewers have done that. It's a masterpiece, end of the story.

But the other tracks are just as atractive to me.Great variety of sounds, rhythms and styles. And he seemed to rediscover his knack for writing clever, yet disturbing lyrics. It's amazing how he writes great pop tunes with words from the point of view of such characters. Jealousy, anger, fear, temptation, recklessny, madness, greed, even a girl with multiple personalities, you name it. They're all here. Original and intelligent. Tony Banks is really a very underrated songwriter. His views of the human being are so lucid they're scary sometimes. But fortunatly he has the talent to deliver them with an equally good sound landscape. If you get this CD listen carefully to the words as much as the music. Your attention will be rewarded. Recomended for the ones who believe that rock can be also excellent food for thought.