CURED

Quite a change and a drop in quality from his previous work overall, but the songwriting, for the most part is still pretty strong. Just a different style than his fans were probably expecting at the time. Nothing wrong with that, of course. In fact, Steve does all the vocals on this album, and I think his voice suits these types of songs very well, especially when he's harmonizing with himself, as on the almost country-ish "Hope I Don't Wake" and even moreso on the very memorable "Funny Feeling", which employs THE perfect reverb for his multi-tracked vocals. "Picture Postcard" is probably the most creative of these songs, with a nice picked clean-tone electric guitar part moving alongside a good synth-bass part. Probably the weakest aspect of this album are the drum parts, which are played on a drum machine - something I don't usually have a problem with, but these are those really bad 80's drum machine parts. You've all heard them: simple deep kick and snare patterns that are mixed way too loudly. It doesn't really help that the arrangments as a whole aren't really all that spectacular, but that's to be expected from a homemade album only recorded by two people (him and his keyboardist, Nick Magnus, with a few guest exceptions.) The instrumental "The Air- Conditioned Nightmare" is noticably affected by these production shortcomings, but Steve is still playing very well, and if you're a fan of his electric insturmentals, you'll probably appreriate this song. It's also interesting to hear this type of production on a song with mulitple time- signature changes, "Overnight Sleeper", which reminds me of a later Jethro Tull intsrumental, even though it contains vocals. The album ends on a nice calm note with "Turn Back Time", which is really a very good ballad. Recommended to open minded Hackett fans and anyone looking for obscure pop from the early 80's.