HEAVEN & EARTH

Beautifully written songs put through an industrial-grade production blender to produce porridge. Fodder. Cotton wool for the ears. Music that begs to be played as the background to something else. Music that never, not for a second, commands attention. No feathers ruffled. Nothing out of place. Music so scared to offend it misses any chance it had to delight. Unambitious. Safe.

Bland.

If this were food it'd be the stuff they feed you after a major operation while you're waiting to resume your life. Which is exactly how you feel waiting for this album to end. Waiting. Waiting...

Look, if you don't want to be compared to your years of greatness, don't hire a soundalike vocalist. Don't come up with a Roger Dean album cover. Don't pad your AOR songs out to prog length. I cannot tell you how much I prefer the risks you took when you made 90125 (yes, risks) than the deathbed music you've come up with here - six terrifyingly meaningless black holes of suck sandwiched between two marginally acceptable sub-YES numbers.

Here's a plan: stick 'Believe Again' and 'Subway Walls' together with the 'Fly From Here' suite and you've got a decent three-star album.

Anything rather than this soggy, samey exercise in limp banality.

YES. Does it blend? Yes it does.

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