SONG OF SEVEN

You've spent the last ten years of your life in a band that has come to define progressive rock. You've release a brilliant concept album in which you have achieved a reputation as a musician as well as a singer. You are at the top of your game. What do you do next?

If you said "Let's release a solo album filled with campy, half-baked pop songs," you missed the right answer. But don't worry, Jon got that question wrong too.

Most of this album is so banal that I find it impossible to listen to. If the album consisted of only the first seven tracks I would consider myself generous for giving it one star and slam it as the worst solo album ever made by a former Yes member, (that's right, it'd fall below Wakeman's Rock and Roll Prophet.) I honestly have nothing to say about the first seven tracks except that I heartily wish Jon had never recorded them.

The last two tracks on the other hand, are something else.

Days is one of those slow, bittersweet songs that really lets Jon's voice take over the music. It's not as good as, say, the Soon section of The Gates of Delirium, but that's the kind of mood this song creates and Jon knows exactly how to exploit that. I'd give that song 3 stars.

Song of Seven is an epic work. Jon delivers an inspired performance on it, from the brash, upbeat beginning to the wistfully sentimental end. Lyrically it is pretty good too; Jon is working in the same vein that he did in Olias of Sunhillow, where he tries to present disjointed glimpses of the story he has imagined. The musicians accompanying him are not bad either, although it would have been real nice if, say, Steve Howe had just happened by the studio and decided to sit in on this session.

The bottom line on this album is that Song of Seven is a track that every Anderson fan should listen to, and the rest of the album is, at it's very best, forgettable and forgotten.