THE TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD

Along with Tales of Mystery and Imagination, The Turn of a Friendly Card stands as one of the Alan Parsons Project's most unique albums. For one, they eschewed the usually great but obligitory introductory instrumental in favor of an upbeat rock song in "May Be a Price to Pay" that introduces us to the concept quite intruigingly with slightly atypical for the band arrangements, and attention getting lyrics sung urgently by Elmer Gantry. This song is followed by another one of the project's faster songs, "Games People Play", which is in my opinion one of their most expertly crafted pop songs, and one which serves as a good example of the band's ability to bring a good amount of seriousness to that genre, enough in fact to earn their place on this site in the Crossover Prog territory. Great synth string part here, great, great melody and vocal work, wonderful bending-in-thirds guitar solo, and very thought provoking lyrics that can be looked at from more than one perspective, as with most of the lyrics of this album, which I always took to be a multi-layered concept. There's not a bad track on this album, and the next one "Time" is perhaps the best, with it's majestic, soaring setting, another amazing melody set to deceptively deep lyrics, and a truly beautiful vocal part by Eric Wolfson. I'm with the others who wonder why he wasn't a featured singer earlier in their career, havaing as delicate a voice as he did. "The Gold Bug" is very different for them, and has a very picturesque atmosphere that you just have to hear. The title track suite also has some very good intsrumental work on it, with the highlight to me being "Part Two", where the suite unexpectedly turns back to the melody of "Part One", it being one of the most creative melodies I've ever heard. It may not be a masterpiece of progressive rock, but it is definitely an excellent addition to any prog rock collection.