IN THE SPIRIT OF THINGS

I think that the eighites was a very hard decade for some Progressive Rock bands which had to survive pleasing the record companies which gave them recording contracts but not very much artistic freedom. I think that this thing can be listened very much in an album like this by Kansas. This is another over-produced eighties album more oriented for the Pop Rock and Hard Rock markets than for the Prog Rock market. All those "commercial eighties" ingredients are there in this album: very typical eighites sound in the keyboards, a lot of reverbation, typical sounding drums, etc. The guitars by Steve Morse are very good, but more oriented to the Hard Rock style, and Rich Williams is more in the background as guitarist. The original music style of Kansas is harder to identify than in their previous album called "Power", and the band sounds very different. Steve Walsh´s voice sounds good even if it sounds a bit "raw" and a bit tired. The record label even suggested to the band to use songs composed by people who was not in the band, sounding very commercial for my taste ("One Man, One Heart", ."Once in a Lifetime" and "Stand Beside Me") like the record label executives wanted hit singles and they didn´t believe the band had those hit singles as composers. I only like these songs from this album: "One Big Sky","The Preacher" and "T.O. Witcher".