IN THE SPIRIT OF THINGS

In the Spirit of Things, the second and last Kansas album featuring Steve Morse, is maybe even more disappointing than its forerunner, Power. At this point, it seems clear that the band had given up on any artistic aspiration and was just there for the money . which I guess must not have been so much considering the poor quality of the songs here.

For the first time, the band even uses outside composers for one third of the songs. I remember Steve Walsh telling that those composers were imposed by MCA in hope to get a hit single. Wrong move .

Apart from Steve Walsh's voice, nothing on this album -I mean NOTHING- will remind you of the great band that Kansas was in the 70's (and even, IMHO, in the early 80's). All you get is mainstream AOR stuff all the way . which could be OK for me if the songs were not so caricatural and, for the most part, rather terrible.

Still, a few tunes save the album for being a complete stinker. The first one is "Inside of Me", which has a very effective guitar riff unfortunately half-ruined by a poor chorus : it could have been a minor hit for, let's say, REO Speedwagon. The second is "The Preacher", an heavier number totally predictable but that gets the particularity to have guitar solos . which is very rare on this album ! It could have been a minor hit for, let's say, 38 Special. The third and last is "Bells of Saint-James", an effective rocker with a good short solo but, again, a poor chorus : it could have been a minor hit for, let's say, Survivor. But don't get me wrong : those songs are not great, they are just average.

Two other tracks can be listened without an urge to hit the skip button : "Stand beside Me" (the single !) and "I counted on Love". Both would be OK had the band been allowed -or taken the time ?- to record instrumental parts instead of lazy fading outros at three and half minutes .

Everything else is highly forgettable since it shows a complete lack of inspiration and has been done -much better- billion times before.

If you are a die-hard collector for 80's AOR, even the worse of it, you can add In the Spirit of Things to your collection. For anyone else, and especially fans of Kansas classic sound and stuff, it's better to erase from your memory the very existence of this album.

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