Category Archives: Album Reviews

Anthony Braxton: Quartet (England) 1985

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Anthony Braxton has one of the largest discographies in music history, encompassing a huge variety of styles and formats: operas, pieces for two pianos, orchestras, solo saxophone, 100 tubas, jazz quartets, ‘found’ objects and many more.

The saxophonist/composer/teacher turned 80 in June, and has also just been inducted into the illustrious DownBeat Hall of Fame.

This writer has long championed ‘Forces In Motion’, Graham Lock’s excellent book about Braxton’s November 1985 tour of England, and a large portion of that tour can now be heard on a thrilling digital box set Quartet (England) 1985, for which Lock has provided new liner notes (he also recorded all the material on a portable cassette player).

The quartet, which comprised Braxton on various reed instruments, Marilyn Crispell on piano, Mark Dresser on double bass and Gerry Hemingway on percussion, was one of Braxton’s most active bands in the ’80s, but didn’t record in the studio until 1991.

Quartet (England) 1985 presents four complete concerts from Sheffield, Leicester, Bristol and Southampton (the London concert was officially recorded and broadcast by BBC radio). The original mono cassette recordings, captured by Lock as references for his book, have been restored by engineer Christopher Trent.

The package also features bonus recordings of the quartet playing John Coltrane’s ‘After the Rain’ and Miles Davis’s ‘Four’, plus soundcheck recordings of ‘All The Things You Are’ and ‘On Green Dolphin Street’. There are also previously unseen photos taken during the tour and a full list of the compositions played (the set was different every night).

Braxton (in borrowed coat), Dresser, Crispell and Hemingway at Stonehenge, 22 November 1985. Photo by Nick White

There’s no getting away from the fact that these are wild and woolly mono recordings, but pleased to report that Trent has done a superb job of cleaning up the tapes and the audio quality doesn’t hamper the listening experience one bit.

The music varies between good and excellent. ‘Free jazz’ barely covers it – the material is actually generally meticulously composed and arranged (featuring memorable, catchy melodies), though there are improvised sections which mainly serve as connecting interludes.

If you want to hear a collision between Sonic Youth, Ornette Coleman and Gyorgy Ligeti, enlist here. It’s a no-cliché zone, guaranteed to annoy the neighbours, and a valuable detox from the mainly safe, secure sounds of today. Quartet (England) 1985 is highly recommended and a fine 40th anniversary celebration of the 1985 tour.

(Postscript: for an impassioned defence of ‘spontaneous improvisation’, check out Stewart Lee’s appearance on the BBC’s ‘Great Lives’ discussing guitarist Derek Bailey.)

Sting: The Dream Of The Blue Turtles @ 40 (Part 2)

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In part one of this 40th anniversary celebration, we looked at the origins and recording of The Dream Of The Blue Turtles.

But now to the music – how does it stand up in 2025?

‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free’ was a ‘corrective’ for ‘Every Breath You Take’, an anti-surveillance, anti-control relationship song.

Sting’s demo apparently sampled Omar Hakim’s snare from Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, much to the drummer’s amusement. Listen out for Sting’s great rhythm guitar in the middle eight.

It was the lead-off single from the album but only reached #26 in the UK (#3 in the States), despite a superb Godley and Creme video.

‘Love Is The Seventh Wave’ was a last-minute jam (with Sting on bass?) and the album’s second single (missing the top 40 completely), while ‘Shadows In The Rain’ was the first thing the band recorded at Eddy Grant’s studio while waiting for Marsalis to show up.

During the saxist’s overdub, reportedly he wasn’t told anything about the track, just told to start playing. Apparently Sting mumbles ‘A-minor’ when asked by Branford what key the song’s in…

Sting has gone on record as saying that ‘Russians’ was supposed to be an ‘ironic’ song in the Randy Newman/Mose Allison mold, and it was the only decent hit in the UK (#12) when released as a Christmas single in December 1985.

Though particularly well-sung (but with an annoying slap-back echo), it sadly misses with its annoyingly on-the-nose lyrics and Kirkland’s cheapo synth backing.

This song really needed the Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson or even Hugh Padgham treatment, as did ‘We Work The Black Seam’.

But there’s much better stuff elsewhere. ‘Children’s Crusade’ was reportedly a second take, recorded totally live, with Sting replacing his vocals later.

He taught ‘Consider Me Gone’ to the band in the studio. Reportedly they tried a few unsuccessful takes, then Eddy Grant brought in the president of Guyana to say hello. They nailed it immediately afterwards. Sting’s voice is superb here, on the edge of hysteria.

The brief, Thelonious Monk-like title track (also with Sting on bass?) features a mind-bending Kirkland piano solo which amazed me as kid. I didn’t understand its ingenious polyrhythms at all. I do now but it still sounds brilliant.

‘Moon Over Bourbon Street’ (Sting on bass?) is musically heavily influenced by the jazz standard ‘Autumn Leaves’ and lyrically inspired by Anne Rice’s book ‘Interview With A Vampire’.

Kirkland’s synth oboes are a bit naff – couldn’t Sting afford real ones? It missed the top 40 when released as the album’s fourth and final single.

‘Fortress Around The Heart’ marries a stunning chorus to some seriously tricky verse modulations (Rick Beato’s great video runs them down). One can take or leave the rather heavy-handed symbolism of the lyric, guaranteed to wind up the post-punk critics, but at least Sting was stretching.

The album’s third single, ‘Fortress’ also missed the top 40 (Sting has always been a surprisingly unsuccessful solo artist with regard to the UK singles chart).

Ultimately Turtles is a bitty album, evidently put together very quickly. Every song is different and it seems a template for potential future projects (arguably Sting only really got his solo career on track with the followup …Nothing Like The Sun) rather than a confident debut.

The playing is predictably great though. Everyone gets their chance to shine…expect Darryl Jones, who is weirdly anonymous.

Sting was apparently obsessed with the Synclavier digital sampler during 1984 but admirably resisted a machine-tooled, over-produced album.

Still, for someone so keen to distance himself from The Police, maybe it’s odd that he rerecorded a Police song for the album and also named his next album/film after a Police song….

Sting and band did some ‘secret’ gigs at the Theatre Mogador in Paris just before the album release on 17 June 1985, and if memory serves this writer bought it the week it came out. It was one of many exciting buys during that landmark summer of 1985 (see below for more).

Turtles was immediately a big hit, reaching #3 in the UK and #2 in the States. It also earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year (admirably, Sting didn’t play any songs from it during his Live Aid appearance in July).

Then, in a turn of events that must have amused him, readers of Rolling Stone magazine voted Sting #2 jazz artist of 1985 (after Wynton Marsalis) and voted Turtles #2 album of the year (after Brothers In Arms).

He was also #2 male singer and #2 songwriter, both behind Springsteen, and #2 bassist, despite the fact that he probably didn’t pick up a bass during 1985…

Then of course there was the ‘Bring On The Night’ tour, album and movie, of which much more soon.

(PS – What a stunning series of album releases during summer/autumn 1985: Boys And Girls, Cupid & Psyche ‘85, Turtles, A Physical Presence, A Secret Wish, Hounds Of Love, Around The World In A Day, Brothers In Arms, Steve McQueen, You’re Under Arrest, Dog Eat Dog etc. etc…)

Sting: The Dream Of The Blue Turtles @ 40 (Part 1)

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At the end of 1984, Sting seemed hellbent on erasing (albeit temporarily) any traces of The Police.

Buoyed by his happy relationship with Trudie Styler, he was falling back in love with music (but not, apparently, the bass guitar) and studying Brecht and Weill.

‘I cry a lot. I’m moved easily by a chord progression,’ he told Musician mag at the time.

He was also developing some solo material. But there was no band.

He moved FAST. In late 1984, he asked his friend, musician and writer Vic Garbarini, to put some feelers out in New York City.

By January 1985, saxophonist Branford Marsalis had been recruited (helped by the fact that Sting had heard that The Police were his favourite band) and some audition workshops were set up, attended by some of the hottest young fusion and funk musicians in the city.

Then, during a dinner break near AIR Studios in Montserrat while working on Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’, Sting met drummer Omar Hakim for the first time, who was another quick shoo-in (Omar apparently jokingly auditioned with knife and fork at the table).

At New York’s SIR rehearsal studios in January 1985, Sting, sitting in front of his Synclavier, with a Fender Tele at his side, bassist Darryl Jones (who was still playing with Miles Davis), Hakim and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland jammed on Police songs ‘One World’, ‘Demolition Man’ and ‘Driven To Tears’.

Sting then set them to work on a new song, ‘Children’s Crusade’, playing the demo over the studio speakers. He had found his band (Sting also found time to guest on Miles’s ‘One Phone Call’ during this time).

Sting, Marsalis, Hakim, Kirkland and Jones did a few surprise gigs at The Ritz club in New York City in late February. By early March 1985, after an aborted try at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, they were recording Turtles at Eddy Grant’s Blue Wave Studios in Barbados.

Pete Smith was engineering and co-producing, who had impressed Sting while helping record his Synchronicity demos.

But Sting was panicking about his voice, and the fact that he was going right outside his comfort zone. With good reason. This new music, light and drawing on jazz, funk and folk forms, was nothing like The Police. A&M Records were depending on a hit.

There wouldn’t be one note of distorted guitar on the album. It was more in line with Sade or Simply Red (but of course the musicianship was on a different planet to those artists). And the production and arrangements were very minimalist by mid-‘80s standards.

Next time: the album, track by track – and has it stood the test of time?

The Stanley Clarke Band: Find Out @ 40

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Like several other jazz/rock heroes of the 1970s, Stanley had a distinctly dodgy 1980s.

But the decade had a decent beginning (Rocks, Pebbles And Sand), middle (Find Out, released 40 years ago this month) and end (If This Bass Could Only Talk).

Circa 1989, this writer found a vinyl copy of Find Out in a weird (long-gone) record shop on Hammersmith Broadway called Trax, having no idea that it had ever been released.

As it turned out, the album was a fresh (but false) start for Stanley, arguably his best funk/pop record and a last shot at stardom, complete with ingenious ‘Born In The USA’ cover.

His bass playing could still knock your socks off but here it took a back seat to well-crafted, commercial songs plus a few decent instrumentals, all utilising top LA-based players/engineers/songwriters.

The liner notes reveal all. Many of the keyboards were played by Patrick Leonard, who had just finished a stint as musical director for the Jacksons’ Victory tour and was rehearsing for Madonna’s first US tour during the recording. He also had a hand in several compositions.

Stanley had also recruited his best drummer since Simon Phillips: Rayford Griffin. Their duels match anything he did with Steve Gadd and Gerry Brown during the ‘70s, and Griffin brought great grooves and arrangement-smarts too.

Then there was the presence of teenage soul prodigy Robert Brookins, a fine vocalist and keyboard player who had toured extensively with George Duke in 1983. Finally the album sounds great, helped by superstar engineers Chris Brunt, George Massenburg, Mick Guzauski and Tommy Vicari.

It’s full of catchy, easy-on-the-ear pop/soul tracks like ‘Don’t Turn The Lights Out Yet’, ‘Psychedelic’, ‘What If I Should Fall In Love’, the title track and ‘The Sky’s The Limit’. His Springsteen cover pushes the envelope, opening with a nod to John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ and turning into a neat mash-up of rock, electro and old-school hip-hop, with mad bass solo thrown in for good measure.

The two synth-heavy instrumentals are a blast and the album closes with a kind of ‘School Days’ for the ‘80s called ‘My Life’, complete with superbly over-the-top Raymond Gomez guitar playing and Griffin drumming, much-imitated by yours truly back in the day.

Sadly Stanley followed up Find Out with the dismal Hideaway and his solo career arguably lost momentum. He mainly moved over to movie soundtracks in the ‘90s though made a partial return to top solo form in the mid-2000s. But if you want to mainline mid-1980s synth-funk heaven, you could do a lot worse than this.

Bryan Ferry: Boys And Girls @ 40

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Bryan Ferry’s one and only UK #1 album to date (and biggest-selling record in the US) was released 40 years ago this month.

The Antony Price/Simon Puxley cover is seductive, the Bob Clearmountain mix is delicious, the grooves are pleasant, there’s an array of great players, and this writer can’t resist playing his vinyl copy every year or so.

So why is Boys And Girls always a strangely underwhelming listen?

Despite its big sales and Ferry’s watertight reputation, it has also failed to garner any posh anniversary write-ups in the monthly music mags and didn’t even make Classic Pop mag’s 2015 readers poll of the 100 best 1980s albums. Maybe it could/should have been Ferry’s Let’s Dance (and one wonders why he didn’t enlist Nile Rodgers to produce?).

Ferry completed the album just as he was mourning the death of his father (reflected in the lyrics to ‘The Chosen One’?) but started work back in summer 1983 with producer/engineer Rhett Davies, veteran of Roxy’s Avalon as well as the classic King Crimson double of Discipline and Beat (Davies left the music business for 20 years soon after working on Boys And Girls…). They devised drum-machine beats and laid down keyboard beds while Ferry outlined vague lyric/melody ideas.

Work mostly took place at The White House on London’s King’s Road (meanwhile, less than a mile away in Stanhope Gardens, David Sylvian was devising his own mid-1980s triptych, arguably a far more successful fusion of pop, white funk, ambient and jazz…), a demo studio owned by Ferry’s manager Mark Fenwick. Musicians were then brought in to overdub onto those eight-track demos – seven studios and 30 musicians/singers are credited!

The songs have various nods to the Avalon era. ‘Windswept’ (named by Ferry in a 2003 interview as one of his six favourite songs, the others being ‘Do The Strand’, ‘Avalon’, ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’ and ‘Mother Of Pearl’) seems inspired by B-side ‘Always Unknowing’, ‘Slave To Love’ obviously nods to ‘Avalon’ while ‘Sensation’ is built around a melodic motif embedded in ‘Take A Chance With Me’.

The piecemeal recording process affects the material though – Boys And Girls desperately misses the quirkier aspects of Avalon, with those vital contributions of messrs Manzanera and Mackay (not to mention bassist Alan Spenner).

David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, David Sanborn, Nile, Marcus Miller and Andy Newmark are vaguely familiar now and then, but other big players are anonymous. Ferry’s patented piano work is almost entirely absent.

‘Slave’ is a case in point (though does feature some of that Ferry piano). Built around one of the hoariest old chord progressions in commercial music (incidentally very similar to the verses of ‘Dance Away’ but without that song’s interesting key change or atmosphere…), Ferry doesn’t bother with a bridge (or what Americans call the ‘pre-chorus’) or interesting chorus, just repeats the verse chords again and adds the chanted vocals.

He generally eschews bridges and modulations on Boys And Girls, sticking mainly to two-chord vamps (Avalon, in contrast, featured several ONE-chord songs, apparently influenced by Miles’s On The Corner and James Brown, but they really worked…).

The title track drearily cycles E-min/B-min, while ‘Stone Woman’ sticks rigidly to a very dull D-min/B-flat. Both songs are mercifully/abruptly cut short, Ferry unable to elevate the material with strong melodies.

Still, the music is beguiling and beautifully-appointed (though side A seems much too long, my stylus really struggling to get through ‘Windswept’) and yes, this time next year movingtheriver will probably be reaching for the vinyl, saying ‘Maybe this time’…

Robert Fripp: Exposure (The Definitive Edition) @ 40

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Fripp’s debut solo album, originally recorded at New York’s Hit Factory between January 1978 and January 1979, has endured endless tinkering from the artist including various remixes/reversions.

But his 1985 (or should that be 1983?) remix, carried out at London’s Marcus Studios alongside Brad Davies, is the best.

But calling Fripp completists: is this version of Exposure even available on any format apart from the original cassette? (Thank goodness I still have my copy, signed by Fripp at the Virgin Megastore circa 1988, because I bought the noughties CD version to find that it featured completely different vocal takes, and the current streaming version is just as obtuse…).

The 1985 version of Exposure adds some sonic wallop to the drums, pushes Barry Andrews’ keyboards way back in the mix, comps the best of Daryl Hall and Peter Hammill’s vocals and features arguably Peter Gabriel’s best ever version of ‘Here Comes The Flood’ (with Frippertronics prelude).

It’s also a completely personal album, Fripp’s Face Value, the musings of an uptight Englishman in NYC, a prog/fusion version of ‘Annie Hall’. There are funny vocal interjections/indiscretions from his mother (‘You never remember happy things’), Fripp himself (‘Incredibly dismal, pathetic chord sequence’) and Eno (‘Can I play you some new things that I think could be commercial?’).

Gabriel fluffs the opening of ‘Here Comes The Flood’, Hall layers his vocals in strikingly avant-garde fashion, JG Bennett’s words are often layered in (with permission from his widow), arguments are eavesdropped upon and there are striking ‘audio verite’ sections. And lots of Frippertronics.

Fripp also uses silence to great effect. Don’t play this album too loud. But then there are the gorgeous ballads, ‘North Star’, featuring delightful pedal steel from Sid McGinnis and wonderful Hall vocals, and ‘Mary’, featuring Terre Roche (she also screams away on the cool reversion of Gabriel/Fripp’s title track).

And drummers: you gotta hear this album. Forget Narada Michael Walden’s playing with Weather Report, Jeff Beck, Tommy Bolin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra – this is his most outrageously brilliant drumming on record. Phil Collins plays well too, as do Allan Schwartzberg and Jerry Marotta.

1985 was a good year for Fripp. Alongside this fantastic Exposure remix, he met future wife Toyah, recorded some brilliant stuff with David Sylvian and also set up his ‘study group’ The League Of Crafty Guitarists.

Steve Hunt/Tim Miller: Changes

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Arguably no guitarist has stepped into Allan Holdsworth’s shoes since the Yorkshireman’s sad death in 2017 – hardly surprising since he was one of the greatest, most original voices on the instrument.

But if anyone can get close to recapturing Holdsworth’s compositional magic, it’s keyboard player Steve Hunt who toured/recorded with the guitarist between 1988 and 1995 and wrote two bona fide Allan classics – ‘Dodgy Boat’ and ‘Joshua’.

Hunt’s new album Changes features guitarist Tim Miller and three key Holdsworth collaborators: drummers Chad Wackerman and Gary Husband, plus bassist Jimmy Johnson. It’s a feast of interesting chord voicings and strong melodic statements. It doesn’t hurt that Miller is clearly a devotee of Holdsworth, a fluid, elegant player with a similar tone and legato approach, but obviously way off the unpredictable, effervescent brilliance of Allan. No shame in that…

This is heavy, intricate, epic music, decidedly nearer the prog/rock end of fusion than the jazz. Opener ‘Falling’ is a superb composition with lots of Holdsworth chord voicings, interesting modulations and a memorable melody. ‘Sevens’ seems inspired by Allan’s ‘The Un Merry Go Round’, with another great melody and beguiling ‘add-9’ modal flavour, plus a classic Husband drum solo also echoing that Holdsworth piece.

The title track is a moving, melancholy solo Hunt piece performed on various synths, while ‘Inverted’ features some ingenious chord voicings and a superb Moog solo from the composer. ‘Emergence’ is catchy with a lovely crisscrossing feel alternating between 4/4 and 6/8 time, while the closing ‘Next’ may be the most Holdsworth-ish melody of the whole album (and foregrounding a strong Joe Zawinul flavour during the solo section).

There are a few minor gripes – Changes has a slightly ‘whooshy’/over-compressed quality, and the drummers occasionally sound similar, never a problem when they shared studios with Holdsworth during the late 1980s and 1990s. And Miller’s two compositions – ‘Aerial Route’ and ‘Chrysalis’ – are less essential, lacking Hunt’s melodic sense, though the former tune has a brilliant Johnson bass solo which explores every inch of the instrument.

But overall this is a really strong, cohesive, consistent album, and this writer’s favourite ‘fusion’ record since John McLaughlin’s Is That So? from 2019. It’s also essential listening for fans of Holdsworth, McLaughlin, Husband and Wackerman.

Phil Upchurch: Companions @ 40

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There’s a good case that 1984 was Last Call for classic jazz/funk (soon to morph into the dreaded smooth jazz) just before the machines took over and albums like David Sanborn’s A Change Of Heart became de rigeur (but only for a few years – there was an ‘acoustic’ revival in the late 1980s…).

Phil Upchurch’s Companions got in just under the wire. The legendary Chess Records/George Benson sideman (he wrote classic ‘Six To Four’ from Breezin’) had recorded over ten solo albums before 1984, all showing off his significant guitar chops and arrangement smarts.

But Companions (currently not on any streaming platforms – c’mon Universal Music) appeared 40 years ago this month on Paladin, the short-lived British jazz/dance label founded by DJ Paul Murphy and distributed by Virgin. Labelmates included Working Week, Robert Wyatt and Annie Whitehead.

It’s a classic West Coast album and a classic guitar album too, in large part due to the appearance of Lenny Breau (who died in mysterious circumstances on 12 August 1984, just a few days after the recording), famous for his fluid lines and cascading false harmonics, who appears on three tracks and to whom the album is dedicated.

Percussion fans – this album’s for you. Every track features a cornucopia of shakers, cowbells, woodblocks and congas played by Michael Fisher and Steve Forman. Gerald Albright blows a storm on the brilliant ‘Mr T (BA’s Song)’, probably heard by yours truly on Robbie Vincent’s BBC London show back in the day, while Russell Ferrante and Rodney Franklin provide tasty Fender Rhodes and Nathan East some excellent bass.

But, as is normal for mid-1980s fusion albums, there are some dodgy tracks on Companions too – two poor ‘pop’ cover versions (‘Rosanna’ sounds out-of-tune throughout) and an undercooked Jimmy Witherspoon cameo on ‘CC Rider’. Elsewhere there are not-so-great vocals on two tracks by Mike Baker (future drummer/vocalist for Zawinul Syndicate/Whitney Houston?).

But in general Companions is pure comfort music and well worth seeking out, rich with interesting harmony, good grooves and superb guitar playing.

Sun Ra Arkestra: Lights On A Satellite

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One of the unexpected treats of last year was a new – and excellent – album from the Sun Ra Arkestra: Lights On A Satellite.

If you’re looking for an antidote to musical torpor, this could well be it. It draws on free jazz, classic big-band swing, spiritual jazz, gospel and light funk to create one of the most enjoyable collections of 2024.

Led by 100-year-old sax titan Marshall Allen, the Arkestra – celebrating the compositions of late, avant-garde legend Sun Ra, with a few other surprises thrown in – gathered at New York’s Power Station on 16 June 2024 under the jurisdiction of legendary engineer James Farber.

Notice is served by spellbinding opening title track which takes a simple chord sequence and then blows it to bits with a series of coruscating solos. One is then wrongfooted by the superbly played ‘traditional’ big-band melodies of ‘Dorothy’s Dance’ and ‘Big John’s Special’.

Vocals appear from time to time, most notably on the seriously strange cover of ‘Holiday For Strings’. Instrumentation frequently surprises, with snatches of harp, synth, violin and electric guitar sliding into the mix on occasion, such as on the wonderful ‘Tapestry From An Android’.

It is possible to stream the album but it’s worth forking out for the sumptuous gatefold CD or vinyl versions which come with a long essay and some excellent photos. And hey, while you’re at it, check out this excellent Don Letts-directed BBC doc about the remarkable Sun Ra. The first few minutes are worth the price of admission alone.

 

Peter Gabriel: i/o

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Despite his reputation as a sonic groundbreaker and technological wiz, Peter Gabriel arguably hasn’t done anything much good on record since 1992, even as his live shows gain popularity.

1986’s So was of course the huge pop breakthrough, and that album has been the template for his subsequent, rather predictable solo career – he generally switches between atmospheric ballads a la ‘Mercy Street’ or ‘Don’t Give Up, ‘dark’, vaguely industrial rock tracks, and ‘funky’ one-chord grooves with poppy hooks and emotional lyrics, typified by ‘Sledgehammer’.

i/o is his first album of new material since 2002 and sadly it cannot reverse the trend, despite Gabriel’s always excellent, ageless vocals. It mostly meanders by in a fog of ugly snare drums, dry guitars and keyboards (some by Eno), digital treatments/loops pitched somewhere around 1998, and not much air at all. It seems the multi-layered triumphs of ‘Lead A Normal Life’ and ‘Family Snapshot’ are long gone.

Elsewhere Tony Levin’s bass and stick parts are prominent but they can’t produce anything as immediate and catchy as ‘Sledgehammer’. ‘Four Kinds Of Horses’ sums up the problem – a fairly uninteresting half-time groove underpins a fairly uninteresting vocal melody, while a rather irritating piano loop burbles away in the background. It never should have left the rehearsal room and many other (mostly overlong) tracks replicate that formula.

But Gabriel does deliver a pretty good, harmonically-rich ballad – ‘Playing For Time’ – which some other reviewers have very generously compared to Randy Newman’s best work. It’s this album’s ‘Washing Of The Water’.

In conclusion, the main problem with i/o is that it sounds exactly like you think it will. Maybe Gabriel is working with the wrong people, maybe the wrong software. Maybe he needs to get back to recording ‘as live’, embedded in a really good five-piece band. Paging Bob Ezrin, Larry Fast, Robert Fripp and/or Hugh Padgham…

(postscript: I’ve recently invested in the definitive 2007 CD remaster of Genesis’s Lamb Lies Down On Broadway – it sounds absolutely fantastic and I feel 18 again…)