HERE

Adrian Belew's album "Here" was released in 1994. In Belew's musical history, it falls into place while King Crimson was still on hiatus, before they reformed and released "Thrak", and after his stint with the art-pop band "The Bears", the members of which would continue that band and open for and be the back up band for Belew's solo tours. Thus, taking a lot of these influences, he released this mostly pop-style album which still contains some entertaining tunes that also reflect some of his experimental and King Crimson styles, but focuses more on song writing than on progressive style.

This album sees Belew focusing on his love of The Beatles and 60's style pop music, while giving it an updated feeling using his electronics and guitar effects to give them an experimental, up-dated feel. Belew performs everything on this album. This is immediately evident as the first track "May 1, 1990" starts up with atmospheric sounds which soon morph into a conventional beat and an infectious piano riff, settling into Belew's unique voice and an accessible song that still manages to avoid falling into any major pop music cliché types. Unpredictable enough to not be standard fare, yet accessible enough for anyone to instantly like, this album continues to focus on these melody heavy, song oriented tracks.

His love for The Beatles shows through on tracks like "I See You" and psych-60's mid-eastern influences as in "Survival in the Wild" all the while keeping things accessible. But his experimental years don't go wasted on this album either as you often hear Belew's signature guitar styles come through on instrumental breaks and in forming individual song structures, one of the most obvious is the use of his guitar looping in the introduction of the mystical "Fly" or even some crazy guitar work in "Never Enough". Yet he still finds time to add in a few tracks like "Peace on Earth" that would have fit easily among the mellower section of King Crimson's "Thrak".

While it's true that Belew has often interspersed pop-style albums in between all of his experimental albums, this is one album that tends to be likable throughout, and is even one of his more cohesive pop endeavors. He keeps it all fresh by adding in nice little surprises and cool little unique sounds. In the end, you get a bunch of art-pop style songs that are effective in stretching the boundaries of popular songwriting. You also get a nice, cohesive album that ends up being much better than "just a bunch of random, unrelated songs. There might not be a lot of prog here, but there is a nice bit of pop experimentation that keeps this album fresh. This is definitely one of Belew's best pop-oriented albums.