FRAGILE

Let's make a song that sounds like Pink Floyd's greatest hits!

After the split with Eric Woolfson in the early 90's (or the late 80's depending on whether you count Freudiana as an Alan Parsons Project album) Alan Parsons continued under his own name. Between 1993 and 2004 Parsons released four studio albums, but during the last ten years he has released only a couple of live albums and a couple of singles. In 2010 came the single All Our Yesterdays and in 2013 the present one called Fragile.

The digital version of Fragile that I have (available on Spotify and iTunes among other places) features only a single track (hence, no B-side). There is however a CD version that holds two further tracks, one of which is a radio edit of the same song and the other a live version of Luciferama taken from the upcoming live album LiveSpan.

Clocking in at under four minutes, Fragile is a rather straightforward, acoustically driven song. The overarching goal of Fragile seems to be to sound as much as Pink Floyd as possible. Think Comfortably Numb or Wish You Were Here (the song). Fragile is not a bad song as such, but it comes across as a somewhat blatant attempt to mimic these of Pink Floyd's most popular and accessible tunes (of course, Parsons is already strongly associated with that band in virtue of being the sound engineer on Dark Side Of The Moon) and thus maximizing the hit potential. It is too safe a bet really.

If there had been an original B-side on this single, perhaps an instrumental like there was on the All Our Yesterdays single, and not only some radio edit or familiar live track, then I would probably give two stars. But as it stands, this lone track is not interesting enough to justify investigation. Only completionists will need to get hold of this single.

Fragile, with its accompanying video, is an excellent new production from the Alan Parsons Band, their first new music in four years. While releases have been slow in coming, the end products have all been first class. Fragile is a beautifully layer ballad in the Alan Parsons Project/Alan Parsons Band tradition blending the long running elements of Parsons traditional sound with influences from the past. One easily picks up the Pink Floyd elements in the vocal lines while the keyboard elements and guitar work are squarely centered in the Parsons tradition. Fragile seamlessly blends these two elements together to create another must have Parsons classic. The Cd version comes with two versions of Fragile, as well as, a live version of Luciferama. Definitely worth the small purchase price.