IN THE CITY OF ANGELS

Around the time of Big Generator, Jon Anderson recorded this solo album in Los Angeles, the city of angels. Not too surprisingly it has an American sound to it that reminds of bands like Journey and Toto. Some people from the latter band even play on the album. It also sounds very much like a Barclay James Harvest album from the 80's. The music is very slow in tempo, it is slick and it is hardly progressive in any way whatsoever. Needless to say this has absolutely nothing to do with Jon's day job in Yes. Not even with Big Generator or 90125 as those albums are indeed very progressive compared to the present one. There is nothing here that I would consider really poor, it is clearly a very professional recording and Jon actually sounds quite inspired! But one major problem is that all the songs sound quite similar and listening to the whole thing quickly becomes rather dull.

The better songs come at the end and particularly Top Of The World (The Glass Bead Game) is a decent song. The closer Hurry Home (Song For Pleiades) has some tasteful Bagpipes. The rest of the songs are quite ordinary 80's Pop Rock with very slight World influences. If Jon is your favourite singer of all time and you don't mind some slick 80's Pop Rock, then this is for you! Personally, I find it just about listenable and rather boring. This is not my cup of tea at all, and I am quite certain that I speak for most Prog fans.

As I said, this is not a poor product but it is really only for hard core Jon Anderson followers. Sorry Jon, but I cannot bring my self to give this a higher rating than the single star.

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