WE CAN'T DANCE

Not really worth it at all I'm afraid. This album is long, slow and tedious to listen to. Not all bad, but when you compare to what this band had done, it's a pretty poor album. The only one worse than this was Calling All Stations.

It starts off somewhat good. No Son of Mine is a decent enough song for a soft rock band, with good lyrics. It's a slow song, which pretty much sets the tone for the album. Most of the songs are slow, some are downright boring, and the ballads (which there are plenty of) are dreadful.

Their are two 10 minute epics on this album though, so it's clear they were still trying to appeal to the prog base. The first one, Driving the Last Spike, is a disappointment. Good lyrics, but it just sounded like there wasn't much energy put into it, and it dragged. The same thing with Fading lights, although this song kind of benefits from the slower pace, at least for the first part. The second half they really needed to kick it up a notch, but it still really drags. The drumming and keyboard playing are slow and unimpressive, which is kind of depressing considering what they were previously capable of. Fading Lights is the best song on the album. You can hear a sample of it here though, so you know it doesn't get any better that. If you like it, pick the album up, but don't expect anything better than that.