KEEP YER 'AND ON IT

Well this second album of the new line-up is much the same as PMYH, and unfortunately not much betters either: still the same AOR, stuck between late-70's Kansas and Toto. The album boasts a rather intriguing (but ultimately boring) artwork highlight the album with a now shaven-headed Smith clearly the focal visual point of the group.

From the first side of the album, only the Beatles cover Things We Said Today can be extracted as interesting: although the singing is under-mixed, this cover has some excellent drumming and allows for some good interplay in the band. The rest is rather boring AOR with the occasional flash of good playing (the closing minute of the opening track), but some awful slow blues (Chains) as well. The second side of the album brings absolutely nothing more than we've heard on the first side. An Elton John-sounding Way Of Women and a hard-rocker outro Stand Back, with the most interesting Part Of It with its string section are the "highlight" if one will allow those to be called as such on such a poor showing.

If I may appear to paint such a bleak picture of later SDT (as opposed to their brilliant earlier line-up), it is because one can hear that the members present line-up are good musicians, and could write a song when they wished it, but by all means they never tried to over-stretch themselves or even become a tad adventurous. The just assured minimum service or simply tried to sell album to a non-demanding public. This was to their last album. In the 90's original fopunder Adams will reform the band for live tours, but I sincerely doubt he played anything from the last two studio albums (in which he did not participate) and it is easily understandable.