EARTH MOVING

Given that Mike Oldfield's attention span for 20 minute excursions seemed to have diminished manifold over a mere half decade, an album consisting only of pop songs might not have been a bad idea, provided he remembered to write some memorable material and arrange it carefully. Such had been Oldfield's stock-in-trade, but "Earth Moving" sees his trajectory careening off a cliff.

Particularly on the latter half of this album, the material is remarkably weak, even by the lax standards of this dark period for quality material. In other words, this sounded poor even then, and I know because I was there. Even Maggie Reilly cannot save "Blue Night", and the faux soul of the title cut and "Bridge to Paradise" seem like failed parodies. Once in a while a cutesy Oldfield riff surfaces but it's out of context, adding to the sense that little real effort was donated to the cause - at least one would hope, because the results are abysmal.

A few bright spots do emerge, particularly the lovely "Far Country" with a sublime lead guitar duet between Oldfield and Adrian Belew. "Holy" is well executed which partially hides its general lack of appeal as a song, while "Hostage" and "Innocent" are both decent in a synth pop sort of way, with a faithful Anita Hegerland doing an admirable job when called upon.

It's hard to believe that a man so talented could sink so low, and produce an album that so belies its title that one would be exaggerating to credit it with 0.001 on the Richter scale, or 2 stars on the PA scale. 1.5 stars rounded down.