Review:
Ammonia Avenue
By Parke Puterbaugh
You would expect a record that is the brainchild of a pair of producers to
succeed more on technical grounds than creative ones. True to form, the
latest "concept" album by the Alan Parsons Project founders (sic)
miserably in its own overearnest art-rock poetasting. It sounds a lot
better than it scans: "Producer" Parsons and his "executive producer,"
Eric Woolfson, have crafted a set of songs in their overseer role, that
are texturally attractive and sonically impeccable (recall, parsons
engineered Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon). But it's merely a sonic
souffle', empty calories puffed full of hot air.
The concept this time, one surmises, has to do with the give and take, the
infatuation and disillusion, of a romantic affair. Throughout, there's
the sense that, blindly guided by ephemeral passions, we don't really know
what the hell we're doing -- hence, our final destination, the
disorientation of Ammonia Avenue. It's not as onerous and misogynistic as
earlier parsons projects, but any pop song that rhymes reality with
neutrality has two strikes against it; strike three is the subject matter
of the song in question (titled "Dancing on a High Wire"): "The
silver-plated hero meets the golden-hearted whore." Later she's "the
ivory madonna." Huh?
When Parsons and pals aren't recycling stock riff-rock maneuvers, they're
making like insufferable wimps. Following the macho chest-beating of "One
Good Reason" with the poor-me mewling of "Since the Last Goodbye" reveals
a baffling inconsistency of viewpoint. If that isn't enough, they
confound the issue with non sequiturs like this one from Ammonia Avenue's
title track: "Is there no sign of light as we stand in the
darkness/Watching the sun arise?"
Faced with such an abundance of inconsequential confusion, I think I'd
rather be on Electric Avenue.
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