EYE IN THE SKY

One of the APP essentials, I think, along with the previous album, this is the one worth buying, the rest are just for true fans. Alan Parsons Project introduces a mainstream style of progressive rock. The plalying is good as it always is, everything is made with professional touch and very accurately, I have nothing to say to that.

To begin with, the opening track Sirius, leaves a lot to expect. It's actually an instrumental, an ambient intro, not too long as it is, and I could imagine a lot of bands making it part of the next song. But it's obvious they wanted to separate the next track on its own and who's to blame.

Indeed, especially, when the track in question is something like Eye in the Sky. Carrying the name of the album, this track is a powerful prog classic. It's actually very pop/rock, but carries the APP name out very well. There doesn't seem to be any problems in introducing this track to people. However, it's all fine for setting the way for the rest of the album.

Children of the moon is a bit more unimmediate track, however I find it closely related to the first one. It's more rock, with powerful drumming, which is the road APP took in the early 80s.

Gemini is again a rather ambient piece, and a bit short, and again, this song seems like a preview to a massive climax, that is the following song. Gemini does have nice lyrics though, you might want to listen carefully.

Not much bad can be said of Silence and I. I reckon it's the most favourite song of most of the people listening to this song. It starts slow and beautiful, but carries soon to a symphonic array. The band introduces what seems to be a whole orchestra playing music that's greatly introduced later on a movie soundtrack - Ladyhawke. However, sticking to this, you can really imagine at around halfway through, some knights riding into battle. And this is really what APP does best. It's basically a soft melodic base on a song that tells a story. It soon gets off in a frenzy and in the end softens back to the original melody which again, can't stress enough how beautiful this is. The singing on this album is brilliant.

Same can't really be said of the next 3 songs. You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burnt. This song is again one of those songs, that APP wrote to get rid of the prog image. At least it sounds like that. There are several songs like this one, basically one or two on each album, and I could see them making a collection called APP - the Identical Pop Songs. Perhaps a great band like this should stick to what they do best rather than going for the radio. However, with their success in mainstream radio in the end, who can really blame them for wanting to get known.

Psychobabble basically carries on along the lines, a bit more mellow, but still very easy song. This song, hearing the chorus seems really like they wanted to give people a groovy tune to expect a lot from, and the introduce a chorus that really makes you want to skip the song. It's really nothing but irritating, and if there's people in the room I usually just don't play this. Though given, this seems to be the thing with a fair number of 80s synth pop.

Mammagamma sounds daft, and isn't very good either. It's a drag-along electro-tune. Bascially what I mean is, it keeps you expecting for more, but in the end, the 3:35 of the song lenght are heard during the first 15 second and the rest just repeats the tune in different ways.

Step by Step, Little by Little, - Line by Line, one day at a time. A nice groovy song, which again, doesn't live up to expectations, but is a radiofriendly pop track. And reaching the end, that seems to be the drive of the whole album, not including some efforts that make this album special. This song is very much a compromise. a good one to jam and groove to, but nothing groundbreaking.

Old and Wise is a forced return to their slowpaced melancholic, melodic style, and this is again what I love about the band. Soft, silent songs that aren't afraid of sounding beautiful.

All in all, it's one of the good efforts of the band, including some real gems. I'm sad I don't have the remastered version, with the extras. It really makes me sad, that APP insist on putting really bad songs to all of their albums. The ending of this album suffers a lot from the bad synth-pop attacks. It's an album that is good, but again, not essential for people that aren't devoted to APP. Though in the end, it's one of the two albums that stand out as their best, the other being the one before this in the year 1980. Find out about it if you will. 3 stars.