The Alan Parsons Project

I have three albums by the Alan Parsons Project, all of them taped off my brother-in-law and I have to say they are much of a muchness. I think I probably appreciated them more in my Twenties when I had this thing of sitting and listening to stuff that aspired to have a deeper meaning, and attempting to fathom the deeper meaning. But I'm not so sure now.

The tunes are mainly rather pleasant and bland and rather instantly forgettable. I've had these albums the best part of twenty years and you know, they don't exactly form earworms. It never occurs to me to consider Alan Parsons among my favourite artists, and yet, I can't think of anything really bad to say in criticism. I think Alan is most famous for being a producer for an impressive line-up of stars at Abbey Road, but ultimately the 'Project' albums are concept albums, and you know, I have an irrational antipathy to concept albums. Conceptually wrong wrong wrong.

Of the three, Eye in the Sky stands out as being nearly very good indeed.  I like the atmosphere of the album as a whole. There's a crystal-clarity in the wall of sound, even though this is a very old and often-played-on-dodgy-equipment cassette.  The title track has a certain anthemic quality. Silence and I is good enough to be short-listed for my top hundred songs of pop-all-time, and Old and Wise is a wistful ballad, providing a interesting contrast at the end of the album.

At the end of the day it's pleasant enough aural wallpaper, but I want a bit more for my two hours of listening. The voices in particular are formulaic, lacking any sort of personality, colour or drama, except for the times when they sound nasal,  hoarse  and ugly.