ENCHANTED CARESS

"Enchanted Caress" was supposed to be Illusion's third album of the late seventies. Alas, it shows all the signs of a prog group trying to come up with a radio hit, as pushed by their record company. The demos, recorded in 1979, that make up this album are not terribly bad. They're just not terribly good either.

Sole songwriter and vocalist Jim McCarty tries in vain to bridge the gap between commercial concerns and artistic validation. It seems to succeed until listening to the late Keith Relf's lone demo titled, chillingly, "All The Fallen Angels", which was recorded, presumably, sometime in the early seventies, as Relf died in 1976 prior to Illusion officially forming and recording their first album in 1977. Even with it's hippy overtones, Relf's one demo sounds sincere as compared to McCarty's demos.

Uber keyboardist John Hawken, from the Strawbs' Hero and Heroine fame, is almost completely muted, and makes "Enchanted Caress" all the more harder to endure. Fortunately, his classical piano motifs would return on McCarty's excellent but tongue twisting "Renaissance illusion: Through The Fire" solo/reunion (?!) album released in 2001.