EARTHMOTHEREARTH

I mean that "Time Has Come" with that 12strings guitar sounds like the acoustic parts of "Brother of Mine" and effectively with Jon's voice and lyrics how could it sound different? By the way, I'm one of the few who loves that album, so I really like this song as well. Few percussion, probably congas, the already mentioned guitar and some bird's cheeps are the support to Jon's voice, even if later there's also a choir of overdubbed Jons.

The birds continue singing on "Harptree". A harp solo is a very unusual thing in this context: even though the author's was probably thinking to write a newage instrumental, it sounds very folk and medieval. It brings the early CLANNAD to my mind.

"Take A Little Time Out" starts folky as well, with harp, acoustic and 12strings guitars, but Jon's vocals and the melody that he sings are between the classic YES and the duo with VANGELIS, thinking to Short Stories in particular. The instruments are strangely tuned and this is the most remarkable thing technically speaking.

I don' t understand what "Scraggle Cat and Puss Cat Willum" means. It's nice, but it's less than one minutes and seems to be a children's rhyme, maybe a trditional, but I'm not sure.

"Concerto Uno" is opened by Jon's acoustic guitar, low volume bass and vocals. This is a complex song that would have been better served by a full symph arrangement. I imagine Wakeman and mainly Howe playing it. With the current unplugged instrumentation it allows you to only guess how good it is, also because Jon's guitar playing is not what we can call "excellent", not totally bad anyway. Probably better than Bob Dylan's.

"Harptree Too" is another harp solo piece with birds and child.I think the title has been mistyped on the album as I suppose that Jon was meaning "Harptree Two". Consider that the Concertos and the Harptrees have all Italian numbers (Uno, Due, etc.. plus Harptree tree that in Italian is "tre").

"Concerto Due" is another song that I would like to hear played by YES beacuse of its musical reachness. A bravo to Jon for the songwriting. Also the arrangement is very well done even sticking with the acoustic instruments that he imposed to himself for this album with the exception of bass and birds. The only negative thing is the "touch" on the bass strings of the acoustic guitar. Not properly a "Segovia", however he sometimes sounds like the early ANTHONY PHILLIPS.

Another short journey the the 16th Century (and its birds) with "Harptree Tree". Very British, too.

"That Crazy Wind" is a typical Jon Anderson's song. We can find songs of this kind on almost all his albums, including some YES and the collaboration with VANGELIS. Luckily there aren't the Salsa percussion and brass which usually make me skip the track on Jon's albums. At the end, even this track is not bad.

50 seconds of a woman speaking then another Mambo comes, with some congas this time. "Heaven Knows" is quite good but I don't like Jane Luttenberger's voice on this song. She sounds too similar to Jon so I don't understand why he has asked somebody else ti sing it.

"Whalewatching" may be inspired to Greenpeace as well as to "Star Trek IV.". A song with an interesting melody and "Whalesh" language...I would have preferred it a bit shorter.

The title track reprises the 12strings of the opener and looks like an attempt to sound radio- friendly, but it could have worked better some years ago.

In general it's a good album and the songwriting. It is probably the best and most complex one in Jon's solo discography.

For Jon's fans it's a four stars. Three for the others

Share this JON ANDERSON review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to octopus-4
• Report this review (#786745)
• Buy JON ANDERSON music online with PA partners
• Show all JON ANDERSON MP3/Stream
• Go to JON ANDERSON page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Earthmotherearth page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for JON ANDERSON related discussions