Alan Parsons Project – Gaudi
After a gap of two years during which Alan Parsons moved to America, decided he didn’t like it, and moved back to England, the last official Project album is a welcome return to some of the band’s original artistic standards. Orchestral arrangements laced with Spanish guitar pay homage to architect Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926), whose unimaginably grandiose La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona was never finished (and supposedly couldn’t be finished unless construction continued constantly for centuries). The track of the same name as Gaudi’s masterpiece of design is a majestic ode to the impossibility of completing the dream. There is still an abundance of synthesizers and pop-oriented material on Gaudi, but 
unlike its two predecessors, the album achieves a balance of the old and the new. The heartbreaker for this album is “Inside Looking Out”, a six-minute Eric Woolfson extravaganza that succeeds in its very spare instrumentation and surprisingly ends on an atypically hopeful note.
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- La Sagrada Familia (8:44)
- Too Late (4:34)
- Closer To Heaven (5:54)
- Standing On Higher Ground (5:02)
- Money Talks (4:23)
- Inside Looking Out (6:19)
- Paseo de Gracia (3:43)
Released by: Arista
Release date: 1987
Total running time: 38:39
The album was my first exposure to Brent Bourgeois, and though it’s uneven in many places, it’s one of the last great breaths of pure pop music in the late 1980s. This was the second album for the combination of Bourgeois and fellow songwriter Larry Tagg, and also the last. And despite my affection for Bourgeois’ later works, Tagg wrote two of my favorite songs on this album, the joyous and well-harmonized “Best Of All Possible Worlds” and “Waiting For The Worm To Turn”. These two songs exude the best vibes of the catchiest Beatles and ELO tunes, while still bringing their own unique sounds to the mix. Bourgeois’ contributions include the somber and depressing “Coma” (about someone whose alcoholism has left him in – you guessed it – a 
I have to admit, I don’t like Kevin Costner in too many movies, but this is one of my two favorites of his (the other being JFK), and I like the music too, in a weird sort of way. In places, this soundtrack seems so sampled, I don’t know if it’s real instruments or synthesizers, yet in other places – such as my favorite tracks, “Death Theme” and “Four Friends” with their common saxophone part – the music is authentically organic. Overall, a fair album, though the two tracks 
In a way, it’s ironic that Lindsey Buckingham’s swan song to Fleetwood Mac sounds more like a bunch of solo tunes from the individual members of the band than it does a Fleetwood Mac album in many places, which brings up the question: did Fleetwood Mac assimilate Buckingham’s sound, or vice versa? The line really blurs on this album. It also has the peculiar distinction of featuring a Stevie Nicks song that I actually like, “Seven Wonders” (though I can barely stomach “Welcome To The Room…Sara” and “When I See You Again”…have I mentioned that I really don’t like Stevie Nicks’ songs?), as well as some of Christine McVie’s all-time best contributions, among them “Mystified”, “Everywhere”, “Little Lies” and “Isn’t It Midnight”. Buckingham naturally takes full advantage of his last shot at center stage with the Mac, and shows some of his 
In a move that may seem like sacrelige to purists, this entire album consists of recent re-recordings of Orbison’s classic hits, mixed and mastered nicely and in some cases arranged and produced more elaborately than they ever had a chance to be when they were first recorded. The genesis of the project was director David Lynch’s desire to use Orbison’s “In Dreams” in his movie Blue Velvet, and Lynch – later of Twin Peaks fame – wanted a better recording than the original, thus the new recording. With that session’s pleasing results, the rest of the album was recorded and we wind up with this very nice album. Oh, yeah, these are not the origial songs as played on the radio way 
If nothing else, you’ll remember the Dragnet theme from the Dan Aykroyd film reworking of the TV show from this album, but even the Art of Noise’s predilection for rehashing TV cop show tunes can’t save this album. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all skillfully executed and technically proficient, but for my tastes, the Art of Noise was closer to the edge than usual, bordering on pointless noise instead of making avant-garde music. There are a handful of wonderful tunes, including “One World” (one of the group’s best ever), the 
immensely soothing “Crusoe” (not to be confused with their “Robinson Crusoe” remake on the following album), and the boisterous “Day At The Races”. But when most of the rest of the disc is filled with repetitions of the same samples, I find it hard to recommend.
I’m embarassed to confess what got me to get this album on tape years ago. One word: “Funkytown”. Yes, this is the Australian group that did a cover of “Funkytown” around 1987 that went over fairly well. The rest of the album, though it’s thick with drum machine and synth sounds, is better than that song; truth be told, that song is now practically my least favorite. I was lucky to get a CD of this out-of-print album second-hand, so it may be very hard to get a hold of. The other single that I recall from this album 
Okay, I admit it, I got this album mainly because ELO’s Jeff Lynne produced it with Harrison, as well as helping out with songwriting duties. The collaboration was a rare spark that re-ignited Lynne’s post-ELO career, and bested all of Harrison’s previous album sales. There was obviously some wisdom in pairing an ex-Beatle with a Beatle afficionado who had grown up learning all the nuances of the Beatles sound. In many places, though, it does sound like ELO with Harrison singing lead (the title track in particular sounds like it was lifted right off of Balance Of Power), though the best songs on the album are those where Harrison’s ability to craft a bittersweet or nutty pop tune were perfectly married to Lynne’s ability to produce such a song crisply. “Someplace Else”, “Devil’s Radio”, “This Is Love” and “That’s What It Takes” have always appealed to me much more than the two singles everyone remembers, the Beatles 
tribute “When We Was Fab” and the boringly repetitive number one hit “I Got My Mind Set On You”. Why this album has not been followed up on with this unique combination of talent is a complete mystery to me. While the Traveling Wilburys were fun, they didn’t offer the enormous possibilities of further Harrison-Lynne collaborations.