TILL WE HAVE FACES

As I've lately refreshed my relationship with Hackett's music with many surprisingly fine albums, it is strange to think he has done an album of this low quality. Hackett is not at home at all in this commercial effort. Guests include a group of Brazilian musicians and Ian Mosley (who joined Marillion that year). I had this LP some 17 years ago and the only song that I liked was 'Taking the Easy Way Out'; it's the only one with a glimpse of that certain Hackett beauty, even if it's a bit too sweet ballad. 'Let Me Count the Ways' tries to be a nice blues ballad but sounds too lifeless to be that. Most songs are horribly bad. I dare say (after hearing most of his albums) that this is definitely his worst ever. I give this only one star, but all in all I rate Hackett VERY high as a guitarist and a composer. Everybody fails sometimes.

Edited over 12 years later (August 2017): I listened to this album again after a very very long time (even my original review was based on old listening memories), and I feel a bit embarrassed of my all-too-cruel criticism. I was just comparing it to his best (=earlier) albums back then, and indeed the overall sound is quite different, with all the percussion-heavy world music flavour and Hackett himself handling all the vocals, unlike on the earlier albums. Now I also came to listen to, for the very first time, Wild Orchids, one of his recent albums, and it feels worse than this one!

The most romantic and best song 'Taking the Easy Way Out' isn't exactly the only decent song. 'Duel', inspired by Steven Spielberg's debut film about a car driver haunted by a truck driver, is powerful in its own monomanic way. 'A Doll That's Made in Japan' was a positive surprise now. Maybe the new remix and rearranging of songs helps also. But even if this album wasn't nearly as bad as my original review implies, it's still among his weakest, only a two-star work in my books.