WELCOME TO THE SHOW

The Barclay James Harvest output is pretty extensive and I sometimes wonder how I made it this far into their discography! Welcome To The Show is the band's 15th studio album and it is yet another in a long series of less-than-good albums. But apparently there is something about this band that makes me want to hear more and there is usually at least one or two good songs on most of their albums. The previous album, for example, had a beautiful song called Kiev. The present album is no exception either as it has the pretty strong Lady Macbeth. It is an interesting idea to consider how good an album the band could have made if they put all their very best compositions of the 80's and 90's onto one and the same album. Sadly this is not the case and all these albums have fillers. Again, Welcome To The Show is no exception here. Indeed, most of the songs here deserve to be called fillers!

Needless to say there is nothing out of the ordinary here and absolutely nothing that will impress the general Prog fan. I will not comment on each individual track as many are similar to each other and many are generic and middle of the road material. Most of the songs are decent and follow closely in the tradition of the band's previous albums. While only one song here is truly awful, the rest are at least listenable even if mostly totally unremarkable. The (most) awful one is easily John Lennon's Guitar. The lyrics to this song are absolutely immature and naive and could easily have been written by a six year old! Lyrics have always been a problem for this band, but this might be their worst lyric of all time.

The strong 80's Pop sound of the two previous albums has been toned down a little bit for this album and they do sound slightly fresher here. Welcome To The Show is indeed the band's best album since 1983's Ring Of Changes, but it must be pointed out how very easy it is to better such albums as Victim Of Changes and Face To Face.

This album is only recommended for fans and collectors of the band. The only great thing about it is the cover art!

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