Published on Feb 23, 2001
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m on the Alan Parsons mailing list.
And as with all mailing lists, there are certain subjects you just
don’t discuss unless you want to start a flamethrower duel at ten
paces. Now, the AP list is well behaved, so there’s only a
couple… but the biggest one, by far, is
Eve.
One camp believes that it’s the worst thing that Parsons ever
put together. Interestingly enough, this includes Parsons himself.
Another camp believes it’s a misunderstood masterpiece.
Fascinatingly enough, this may be one of those rare situations
where both are half-true.
Eve isn’t bad, by anyone’s standards, but it certainly isn’t
the Project at their best form. The subject — women — is loaded
to begin with, and the beginning of the creative differences
Parsons and Woolfson had with Arista Records may have begun by this
time. The deck was stacked against the Project on this CD in many
ways, and it shows.
Eve is perhaps the worst engineered Project CD, for
starters, its sound muddy and shallow in places. (Tracks from the
CD that were remastered for the
Definitive Collection release show the most improvement;
even more than tracks from
I, Robot). The drums lack punch in most cases, a sad
undermixing of talented drummer Stuart Elliot, and David Paton’s
bass work is little more than average.
What saves
Eve — and what brings in that ‘misunderstood masterpiece’
half-truth — is the writing. “Lucifer,”, the instrumental that
opens the CD, may be the best instrumental Parsons recorded in the
seventies, if not all time; its driving keyboard line and eerie
Morse code intro is hypnotic. “Secret Garden” is another wonderful
instrumental (with what I think is an electric piano lead line),
and “You Won’t Be There” is a sweet, lyrical ballad, plainly
illustrating Parsons’ connection with more single-oriented bands
like Ambrosia. “If Only I Could Change Your Mind” is wistful,
elegant, and spare, a brilliant ballad with a rare female lead
vocalist, and “Winding Me Up” may be the most underrated song in
the Parsons catalog, funny and catchy.
Even the songs have some misses, though. Not even Clare Torry,
the ethereal yodeler on Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side Of The Moon, can save “Don’t Hold Back,” and the
less said about “I’d Rather Be A Man” and “You Lie Down With Dogs”
the better.
Eve isn’t a great CD. It’s not even a good one in places.
But it is neither as great as some claim, or as bad as some others
insist. Alan Parsons, with or without Eric Woolfson, is one of the
most underrated and original voices in progressive rock history,
but even he has some misses.
Eve has to be counted as one, recommended for only the
completist and the fan.