CLOSE TO THE EDGE

Here we go again... Jon Anderson spouts off some more of his pretentious twaddle. Every time I hear him sing he reminds me of a wee Gnome I used to keep at the bottom of my garden. The front cover is warning enough... Blue and green must not be seen especially when painted by Roger Dean Grrrrr!

Jon Anderson's lyrics sound like a randomly mashed up bunch of sentences that are spliced together without even the smallest attempt at being decipherable. He completely refuses to present any abundance of ideas over the entire album - singing the same verse for the umpteenth time, over and over again. So why the hell do I like this???

The one thing I can say about this album is that it's lack of diversity at least makes it very coherent. And dammit - despite my moans - it's actually quite good, which is more than I can say for the so called bonus tracks. They really are a waste of time - particularly 'Total Mass Retain' which is just the second part of 'Close to the Edge'. 'And You and I' sounds identical to the LP version and adds nothing at all. It's actually worse than a waste of time because it detracts from the original album which should finish on 38 minutes.