RETURN TO FANTASY

The title song "Return to Fantasy" reveals the album's content via imaginative keyboards, hazy melodies and mystical themes. I think these factors truly combine the best elements of both Hensley and Byron. Other "artistic" highlight from the album is "Beautiful Dream", a keyboard driven song with beautiful vocal parts, interesting magic feelings and good rock themes. Sadly there are quite many poor songs on this album too, like "Shady Lady" going just for a poor basic rock boogie of the 1970's. "Devil's Daughter" is also a conventional track, but a much better performed. If you are keen of the band's music, I think it is a good idea to listen through this album, as there are some quite good moments on it. But to be honest, they are not very dominant this unbalanced album. Closing number "A Year or A Day" is a good one, but in a way emphasizes the futility of the less imaginative songs preceding it. I haven't heard the recent re-masters, so I don't know the worth of the bonus material. It was a surprise to me that John Wetton was already on this album, as I have a cheap Castle reissue version from early 1990's without line-up notes. Somehow felt his presence more evidently on the following "High and Mighty".