Eye in the Sky (1982)
If there's one album that's known outside of the fans of the Alan Parsons Project it's this one. Not only due to the fact that it has their two biggest hit singles on it, or the iconic cover, but mostly due to the adoption of the opening instrumental tracks by the Chicago Bulls American Football team, and indeed “Sirius” has been used many other times in many other situations. It's just that sort of piece. The album was also the only of theirs to hit the top ten and remains the biggest selling of their career.
It opens, as I noted just now, on “Sirius”, the instrumental introduction, as it were, to the big hit and title track, as deep, humming synth is joined by Ian Bairnson's softly rippling guitar, quickly adding David Paton's thumping bass and then the percussion from Stuart Elliott before Bairnson's riffs rise through the piece with sort of orchestral string accompaniment. It's a very short piece, less than two minutes, and on the back of ticking bass slips into the title track, which probably just about everyone knows by now. As usual, we have a panoply of vocalists, and “Eye in the Sky” features one of the most familiar in the shape of Eric Woolfson, also one of my favourites. The song is mid-paced, driven mostly on Bairnson's guitar, and is about I have not the slightest clue, but something to do with seeing through the plans of perhaps an unfaithful lover?
It's easy to see why it was such a hit. It's got a great hook, memorable melody and it's just about the right length, shaving the four-and-a-half minute mark (though that rise to six and half if it's paired, as it often was on radio, with “Sirius”). Basically it's a simple and very commercial, radio-friendly song with song fine riffs and a really nice guitar solo outro which takes us into “Children of the Moon”, the only song on the album on which both bass and vocals are handled by David Paton. It's a slightly more aggressive tune, reminding me very much of “Snake Eyes” from
The Turn of a Friendly Card, with that already-recognisable motif used by the APP and some really nice almost laid back guitar as Bairnson tones it down a little. To be fair to Paton, he's a decent vocalist but doesn't have anything on Woolfson, Blunstone or Miles. Good backing vocals and again it has a nice hook, but the song is nowhere near as memorable as the title track. It's also another one that's hard to figure out what the hell it's about, though I suspect it might be a kind of legacy of Man on the Moon while people starve on Earth? Probably not, who knows?
There's some trumpet here, but as I see no credit for same I assume it might be on the synth, maybe the Fairlight computer? Mel Collins does contribute sax, but I'm fairly certain that's not sax there. Bairnson rips off a fine solo that ups the intensity of the song, then it drops into a sort of marching, processional percussion-led piece with again trumpety keyboards to lead it out in a fade alongside choral vocals and into the superb “Gemini”, where Chris Rainbow takes over the mike. This is a very gentle song, very much a ballad, drifting along like a leaf caught in a summer breeze, Rainbow attended by some truly lovely vocal harmonies. It's just a pity the song is so short, at just over two minutes the second-shortest, and the shortest non-instrumental on the album. There's an almost Wilson-like harmony going on here which really gives you a sense of layers in the song. Really nice.
Other than the two singles, the standout for me is also the longest track, not quite an epic but surely close to the longest single track the Alan Parsons Project have written up to now, leaving aside the suite from
The Turn of a Friendly Card. Soft, expressive piano from Parsons puts me in mind of their classic “Shadow of a Lonely Man” from the previous
Pyramid, and indeed there are harkbacks to that album, as I'll get into. Woolfson is back on the vocals, and has never sounded so good. This song just perfectly suits his sighing, breathing voice, and the orchestral arrangement in the midsection is to die for, but as I mentioned there are parallels to their 1978 album here, and when the tempo picks up after the first two verses the melody jumps right into that of “Pyramania”. It's impossible to disguise, and to me comes across as somewhat lazy, one of the reasons I can't love this song as much as I want to.
Trumpets again, what sounds like castanets, a thick orchestral synth and percussion bumping along as the tempo rises again, and Bairnson comes in with a fine solo to slow it all down again before the song returns with the final verse and orchestral fade. All in all, it's over seven minutes, but as I say, for me, it's marred by the somewhat uncomfortable sandwiching in of the melody from a previous album. Without that, this song would be pure Alan Parsons perfection, but with it, well, it just knocks it down a notch for me. And unfortunately, whether you have a problem personally with that or not, if you've enjoyed “Silence and I”, then make the most of it, because we've now reached that tipping point of which I often ramble on about, and from here, almost to the end, the album takes a serious turn for the ordinary, even dipping into the mediocre at times.
Those who know me will not be surprised to find that it's our old friend Lenny that kicks the decline of the album off, with the pretty godawful “You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned”, as the APP revert from a sophisticated prog/pop band to an out-and-out rock band, in the same annoying way Jeff Lynne insists on doing with ELO. If you've read my previous reviews, you'll know I have little time for Zakatek; I don't like his harsher singing style, I don't think he's a bad singer but he always grates on me. That said, this isn't the worst song (though I wish he'd sing the title instead of dropping the “s” - it's “
fingers burned”, Lenny, not “finger!” Damn you. Anyway it's okay as I say, but it's fairly standard rock and roll, and does in fairness give the band a chance to kick out the stays and enjoy themselves, but coming on the heels of the sublime “Silence and I” it's just a real comedown for me. Good rocky solo from Bairnson, but even that can't make me more than shrug at this song.
It doesn't get all that much better as sixties star Elmer Gantry takes the mike for “Psychobabble”. The song again is poor, and the lyric is stupid – what the hell is “psychobabble rap”? If you're gonna say crap, say crap, and own it. Rap? Come on. It's poor, or as one of the priests in
Father Ted once pointed out, it's shoddy work, Ted! Shoddy! I've never heard Gantry sing before, but he seems to come from the same school of rough singing as Zakatek, and if we're being totally classist and snobby here, you could see he and Lenny having gone to a national school while Colin Blunstone, Eric Woolfson, Chris Rainbow and even David Paton attended a posh public one. There's a hook in the song – in fairness, there was too in the previous one – and the semi-oriental tapped keyboard is interesting but ultimately I find it a little empty.
I never have a problem with APP instrumentals, and “Mammagamma” is no exception, though don't ask me what the title means. It does, however, again flirt closely – perhaps too closely – with one of the instrumentals on
Pyramid, “Hyper-gamma spaces.” Given that they had two albums between this one and that, I really don't see why, if it's not simple coincidence, they keep looking back to that album. In terms of music though, this instrumental is kind of more in line with the later “Pipeline” from
Ammonia Avenue, bouncing along with the classic APP motif sound, a mid-paced effort which to be entirely fair doesn't change much through its four-minute run. There's also what sounds like a violin, though once more I expect this is synthesised.
Sadly, it's back to Lennyland for the again seriously sub-standard “Step by Step”, a song which I don't consider worthy of being on this album at all, with its semi-soul groove, doo-wop style backing vocals and gurgling guitar. Thankfully, the guys do pull it out of the fire right at the end, literally saving the best for last as Colin Blunstone steps in to save the day with the other big hit, the reflective and melancholic “Old and Wise”, which sees a man on his death bed (
"As far as my eyes can see/ There are shadows surrounding me”) looking back on his life and wondering how people will remember him when he's dead.
”To those I leave behind I want you all to know/ You've always shared my darkest hours/I'll miss you when I go”.
Sighing its way in on a soft little keyboard and piano line, the song is very laid back indeed and sung in a sad voice, yet with a certain sense of acceptance of the inevitable by Blunstone which really makes the song. It's enough to bring the tears, listening to him. The percussion is slow and measured, the APP resisting making it a slow heartbeat that winds down, instead making it the counterpoint of the song. Bairnson isn't quite conspicuous by his absence, but the song is very much driven on the synth and strings, riding along underneath Blunstone's yearning voice, and it ends on a big thundering drumroll as Mel Collins comes in to take the song home in a way I haven't heard since Hazel O'Connor's “Will You?” Superb ending, and really helps you to forget the, let's be honest, poor crop of songs that have preceded it after “Silence and I.”
TRACK LISTING
Sirius
Eye in the Sky
Children of the Moon
Gemini
Silence and I
You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned
Psychobabble
Mammagamma
Step by Step
Old and Wise
It might be ironic that the best known of the Alan Parsons Project's albums gets such short shrift from me, but I don't think it can be denied that this is almost, to use an old footballing cliche, a game of two halves. It opens in terrific style and keeps going, then dips sharply and finally rallies at the end. That gives us, in my opinion anyway, four out of ten songs that are maybe not poor, but certainly below the standard the first five set, and to me that's just not good enough to qualify an album as classic. I like
Eye in the Sky – it was, after all, the first of their albums I bought – but I can't put it in the same realm as opuses such as
Eve, The Turn of a Friendly Card, Ammonia Avenue or
Gaudi.
For me, it's a good album that could have been a great album, but I find myself wondering did the boys run out of ideas and then have to stick on all that filler? Looking at their previous work, they didn't do that – there are few songs I would consider inferior to any of the other tracks on the first four albums – leaving aside
Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which I am not that familiar with and don't particularly like all that much – and even where there are, they're usually one or maybe two. Four bad tracks on an album of ten is sort of unacceptable, so while classics like “Sirius”, the title track, “Silence and I” and “Old and Wise” make this album a worthy purchase, in this age of digital downloads, you could easily take half the album and leave the other half.
A real pity, as I wanted this to be one of my favourite APP albums, but I just can't stretch to that. It does have one of the coolest covers though, so there is that.
Rating: 7.5/10