EAT ME IN ST. LOUIS

This is great nasty, snarling album! I love it. Even the cover has a sinister side to it. ' Positively Animal' and ' Underneath your pillow' the first two tracks kick start the album with a great burst of energy.' Still too young to remember' the single off the album has some fine guitar work. The lyrics on Eat me in St. Louis are also quality stuff.Francis Dunnery has proved to be a highly talented musician and in latter years contributed to Robert Plant's masterpiece ' Fate of Nations'. There are some other good tracks on the album too namely ' Murder of planet earth' and the epic slow ' The ice melts into water', speaking of loved ones and departure. Dunnery's voice sounds quite like Peter Gabriel too in parts.Highly recommended.

On this one the few progressive elements of the previous album have vanished in the haze of hardrock. But at least the guys are showing some nice sense of humour as the CD title as well as the opening song shows. The songs are ranging from stamping rockers like Underneath Your Pillow or Murder Of The Planet Earth over synths-pop songs like Let Us All Go to melancholic ballads like Still Too Young To Remember, Leaving Without You or The Ice Melts Into Water. Till The End Of Time sounds even almost like a grunge rock song. Actually a rather versatile album, nice to listen, but anything interesting for a proghead. But probably absolutely O.K. for fans of the band, so I'm giving it 2 stars.

I regret never having seen It Bites play live. The closest I ever came to hearing them in a concert setting was when I was at a Dan Reed Network concert in the Glasgow Barrowlands. During the period when the crowd were awaiting DRN someone was blasting another bands album over the PA. My mate informed me it was a band called It Bites and it was the album 'Eat me in St. Louis'. I was VERY impressed. I obviously bought it at the earliest opportunity. It is full of excellent tracks and even featured some production by Steve Hillage, a hero of mine. My version of the CD featured the prog-pop classic 'Calling all the heroes'. 'All in Red' and 'Kiss like Judas' were also excellent slabs of pure energy and superb musicianship. This album might surprise a few of you and encourage you to discover for yourself just how good this band were.

I normally don't go for this type of album. It is more arena rock than prog, and reminds me all too much of Styx. But this band attacks each song with such energy it just grew on me.

I originally took interest in the album when I noticed that Steve Hillage produced two of the tracks. It turned out that those two tracks, Kiss Like Judas and Midnight were both recycled from their previous album, Once Around The World. But all of the songs have a similar feel, grand production and a lot of energy.

But as much as I like the album, and it's maximalist production, it's underlying lack of prog prevents me from rating it more than three stars.

Too young to remember

It is apparent from the get go that the weirdly titled Eat Me In St Louis is a much harder edged affair than the two previous efforts. While previous albums were rather tame in comparison with this, the present one is "positively animal". Personally, this one is much more to my liking. The star of the band is Francis Dunnery whose voice sounds very much like that of Peter Gabriel and whose guitar sound resembles that of Brian May! The guitar sound is not the only connection to Queen, this album is produced by Mack who also produced many of Queen's albums (and not by Steve Hillage as others have stated). The Prog tendencies have not been abandoned here, merely presented a bit differently; instead of timid Pop Prog we get Pop Prog with something of a Hard Rock punch to it! The songs are generally a bit shorter here - short and snappy is the order of the day. But more things are crammed into a shorter space of time, creating a much needed sense of urgency that was often lacking on earlier It Bites-releases. Sheer song length is not a sure sign of progressiveness anyway.

Eat Me In St Louis is also a bit darker in both sound and subject matter compared to previous albums. One example is the beautiful Leaving Without You which seems to be based on a suicide letter that opens with the line "I wish I could die and see what it's like" as well as Murder Of The Planet Earth which is a cynical look on mankind.

As I mentioned above, Dunnery sounds very much like Peter Gabriel on this album. But Eat Me In St Louis is more similar to Peter Gabriel's solo albums than anything from Gabriel- era Genesis. Other influences probably include late 70's/early 80's Yes and Genesis and, as previously mentioned, Queen and perhaps a bit of Asia. Keyboards are played by John Beck who provides some nice keyboard solos in among the "biting" guitar solos and melodic hooks. All band members provide harmony vocals which is something of a trademark for It Bites. It is hard to pick out favourite songs as there are no standout songs as such, but who can ignore the gorgeous guitar melody on Still Too Young To Remember and the lovely vocal on The Ice Melts Into Water? There are a couple of weaker moments in Let Us All Go and Sister Sarah but the quality overall is even and high. The album closes with Charlie which is a lovely guitar-based instrumental that reminds me of Steve Morse playing.

My CD version of Eat Me In St Louis differs somewhat from what is listed here, mine being only a single disc with 11 songs. The very nice (and very weird) cover art is by none other than the great Roger Dean and the new It Bites-logo and album title as printed on the sleeve is done in Dean's unmistakable style.

In my opinion this is It Bites' best album and sadly it was also their last (until the come-back in 2008 without Dunnery). The classic Prog purists will probably not be impressed by this, but for any fan of Crossover Prog this is well worth checking out.