EVE

I had a copy of this album on 8-track years ago just because at the time I was buying just about anything with Alan Parsons’ name on it. But even then it wasn’t something that got played all that often, since besides “Lucifer” and maybe “Damned if I Do”, there wasn’t much on it that interested me at the time. Listening to it again now after almost twenty years, my opinion hasn’t changed much.

The Parsons trademark opening instrumental is “Lucifer” for this album, and like most Project instrumentals it has some creative keyboard work (especially the bell-like organ), but the rhythm is pretty repetitive and doesn’t really vary enough to make it interesting. Even the backing choral chants seem a bit flat and cursory. The theme of this album is women (hence the title), and the interrelationships of men with the fairer sex, so the title of this song is probably referring to the Biblical temptation scene in the garden of Eden, I suppose.

“You Lie Down With Dogs” is a pretty biting tune (no pun intended) with Lenny Zakatek verbally dressing down his woman and apparently accusing her of tramping around. This sounds like something (musically and lyrically) that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Foreigner’s ‘Head Games’ album. Maybe either Parsons or Woolfson was coming out of a bad relationship around the time this song was written, who knows.

Long-time Project collaborator David Paton sings on “I’d Rather be a Man”, yet another pop/rock tune with pretty basic rhythm and not much interesting in the instrumentation. This is really poor ‘women are evil’ theme and is pretty forgettable as a whole.

Some guy named David Townshend sings on “You Won’t be There”, a mellow love-and- leave tune in the vein of so many seventies pop singers. There are some decent orchestral arrangements here, but the lyrics are rather awkward and as a whole this is just pure pop drivel. Not at all worthy of the Parsons name.

Chris Rainbow aka Chris Harley serves up his own pop single with “Winding Me Up”, another seventies-inspired tune that could have been a one-hit-wonder for someone like Paper Lace or Orleans.

The other hit single from this album (“Lucifer” was the first) was “Damned If I Do”, with a keyboard/guitar cadence that sounds very much like most of the front side of ‘Turn of a Friendly Card’, with bouncy keyboards, basic tempo, and almost invisible guitars. There’s a little string orchestration on this one, but the stilting organ dominates in between the poppish lyrics except for a brief and uninspired guitar solo near the end. This was a catchy tune in its time, but again is nothing more than radio-targeted pop.

Since this album is about women, it makes sense that one or two of them would appear on the album, and Parsons doesn’t disappoint. He taps into his previous Pink Floyd association once again and delivers Claire Torry on “Don’t Hold Back”. Torry actually has an interesting voice when she’s actually singing lyrics as opposed to her other- worldly scat from ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, although here again the sound is very dated, and the date is 1979. Musically this track has nothing interesting to offer.

The other instrumental is “Secret Garden”, and as usual it is heavy on keyboards and light on variation. This has some nice strings but they almost sound like a combination of the real thing and some synthesizer magic, which wouldn’t be too surprising considering the time in which this album was produced.

Lesley Duncan (another ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ connection) is the other female vocalist on the album, closing it out with “If I Could Change Your Mind”. This would have sounded just about the same if Olivia Newton-John or Kiki Dee had recorded it instead. Move along citizens, nothing to see here.

So in all this is a pretty mediocre album. I can’t believe you are still reading this actually – I would have given up long ago were I not the one who wrote it. The production is technically proficient of course - this is Alan Parsons we’re taking about, after all. But the arrangements are uninspired, the lyrics bitter without any pretense of being clever or multi-faceted, and the overall word that comes to mind is – bland.

Two stars as a pop album, and don’t look for anything resembling progressive music here.

peace

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