AMMONIA AVENUE

I hadn't heard this album in literally years. My dad actually bought the cassette of this album just as it came out in 1984. This was the very first ALAN PARSONS PROJECT album I have ever heard. I hadn't even heard "I Robot" at the time, so I had nothing to compare "Ammonia Avenue" with anything else (until I started hearing other albums). Well, this was the album where Alan PARSONS and Eric Woolfson finally decided that this is the 1980s ("Eye in the Sky" still sounds amazingly stuck in the '70s for a 1982 recording, which was recorded digitally, by the way), so those '80s "big drums" are now creeping in, with a more pop-oriented sound.

The band already had a minor hit in 1983 with "You Don't Believe" (released as a single) and then later included on this album. I remembered the Eric Woolfson-sung "Prime Time" was also a minor hit. Not bad. Eric Woolfson also sung the mid-tempo "One Good Reason". Nice to see him doing something other than ballads like "Eye in the Sky" and "Time". I never warmed up to "Since the Last Goodbye", a rather lame ballad in my book. "Don't Answer Me", again sung by Woolfson was the album's other minor hit. It's an alright song. "Pipeline" is a pretty nice instrumental, while Eric Woolfson once again provides the vocals for the title track. This one isn't bad, and it's one of the album's more progressive tunes. I noticed that this seemed to be the album Eric Woolfson seemed the most dominant vocalist on this album. I don't recall him singing so many songs on one album. Despite this, I still think "Ammonia Avenue" was better than "Vulture Culture", but then my real interest with the ALAN PARSONS PROJECT ended with "Eye in the Sky".