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Alan Parsons Project
I Robot
(Arista/Legacy)
First Appeared in The Music Box, March 2007, Volume 14, #3
Written by John Metzger
There’s a fine line that separates ambition from self-absorption, and over
the course of its 10 studio albums, the Alan Parsons Project struggled to stay
on the right side of it. Considering that Parsons was the engineer who had
brought a crisp clarity to the psychedelic atmospheres that graced Pink Floyd’s
Dark Side of the Moon, it isn’t surprising that the recordings that were
made by the outfit bearing his name were steeped in a similar brand of sonic
splendor. A collaboration between Parsons and songwriter Eric Woolfson, the
ensemble utilized session players and a revolving door of relatively unknown
vocalists to turn its ideas into reality. It initially revealed its grand
intentions by setting the works of Edgar Allen Poe to music on its debut
Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
It was the Alan Parsons Project’s subsequent set I Robot, however,
that garnered mainstream attention for the group. One of its most accomplished
endeavors, I Robot, was a loosely knit conceptual piece that, named after
Isaac Asimov’s series of short stories, dealt with issues of technological
advancement, the thought process of humans, and the nature of spirituality. The
conflict between man and machine played out within the music as the cold
calculation of its prog-rock textures and the icy ambience supplied by its
synthesizers and keyboards clashed with the warm sentimentality of its vocals
and lyrics.
The Alan Parsons Project’s biggest flaw, however, was that it had a tendency
to blend into the backdrop of popular culture in a chameleon-like fashion, and
in hindsight it has become readily apparent that, at its core, the outfit was
more innovative from a technical standpoint than a compositional one. At times,
it seemed to focus too much on fitting into the existing marketplace than on
leading it. The squiggly, disco-derived underpinnings that graced the title
track and I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You are, of course, the most obvious
examples. Yet, Breakdown essentially fused REO Speedwagon with Styx,
while Some Other Time and Don’t Let It Show inferiorly recycled
the theatrical majesty of The Moody Blues. Thirty years hence, a large portion
of the affair — its overwrought power ballads, in particular — sounds
ridiculously dated.
Nevertheless, the latter half of I Robot was considerably more
successful. Beginning with the ominous, Bowie-tinted strangeness of The Voice,
the Alan Parsons Project found its footing by embracing its strengths and
stepping away from its stabs at scoring a hit single. Granted, the final five
tracks — which run the gamut from the sonic waves that crash over Nucleus
to the perfect meshing of Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, and The Moody Blues on
Day after Day to the space-age discordance of Total Eclipse — pale in
comparison with the contents of Dark Side of the Moon. Yet, they do
capture a mood that allows the album to achieve the transcendent posture for
which Parsons and Woolfson were striving.
Recently remastered, the latest edition of I Robot boasts five bonus
tracks. While none of them are essential, they collectively provide some insight
into the recording of the endeavor. Most notable is a new concoction entitled
The Naked Robot, which melds together an array of early instrumental
segments to form an overture that effectively summarizes the outing in its
entirety. 
I Robot is available from
Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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