HIGHLY STRUNG

The follow up to the somewhat lightweight Cured LP saw Steve Hackett still tying to give Charisma the hit single they appeared to be demanding.He succeeded-sort of with "Cell 151" which reached the dizzying height of 66 in the UK singles chart for about 2 weeks.Clearly Hackett was not cut out as a hitmaker.As for the attendant LP Highly Strung the good news was that it was much more Proggy than the previous album.Although it was essentially just Hacket and Magnus as with Cured, this time they had Ian Mosely(Yes-that one!) on drums and what a difference it makes to the overall sound.

The opening track"Camino Royale", although a farly conventional song, opens and closes with some very Prog instrumentation.Hackett clearly loved this song as it oftern featured in his concerts.There are a few rather Poppy tracks as well as Cell 151, including "Walking Through Walls" which unfortunately relies a bit too much on the very 80's gated drum sound and "Give it Away" which is actually a prety decent track and reminds me of the sort of song Trevor Rabin led Yes were doing at the time .I would say Steve Hackett's vocal were a lot stronger on this album than on Cured.

Apart from "Camino Royale", the real standout tracks for me are the three instrumentals."Always Somewhere Else" is a two hander basically, the first half being a very jazzy semi improvised jam before the guitar takes off providing an uplifting second half."Group Therapy" is superb guitar-keyboard fusion fest which goes through several themes.It is easily the best track on the album-certainly the Proggiest.The closing track "Hackett to Pieces" reprises the opening and closing instrumental themes off "Camino Royale" with another burst of aggressive Prog Rock.

Overall I feel the album is only slightly compromised by Hackett's obvious attempts to get more Commercial but I still rate this album highly.

4 stars

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