WINDOWS IN THE JUNGLE

The original 8 song release of this album starts out with it's only high note. 24 Hours is a decent, but not great attempt by Eric Stewart (who seems to almost completely overshadow Graham Gouldman here) to recapture the magic of the earlt 10CC albums. This is a suite in their classic style, adeptly moving from one song style to another. It is by no means a masterpiece, but it is the only track worth owning on an otherwise completely forgettable album.

As you might guess by the comments above, the remainder of the original pressing fall into the cookie cutter style Stewart and Gouldman had been creating for the last few albums. Far too many reggae beats, gratuitous insertion of some of the old 10CC instument sounds, without the creativity and spontaneity that made those early albums a joy.

If you have the luck of owning the 2006 limited edition release, you get the addition of three radio edits of songs from the album. These are completely worthless, as they are castrated tracks, cut down for the short attention spans of the average listener. Also, there are the two live tracks, Dreadlock Holiday and I'm Not In Love, both decent but not outstanding.

Then there are the two tracks that were releases as B-sides to singles. She Gives Me Pain is an upbeat instrumental, alittle reminiscent of Speed Kills, from the debut album. Then there's Secret Life Of Henry. I'm curious as to why this was left off of the original album. It must have been a stupid record company executive (Isn't that term redundant?) decision. This track is easily the best on the album. In fact, it may be the best track 10CC recorded since Lol Creme and Kevin Godley left the band.

The original version gets 2 stars, the expanded version 2.75. Average that out...