It’s not the single most appetising prospect in the entire history of the universe ever, if we’re honest. Namely, transplanting on-off Yes vocalist and Accrington dynamo Jon Anderson to Hollywood – in 1988, erk – to record a nakedly commercial solo album with seamless sessionistas from bloody Toto, among other studio-tanned studs of similar slickness.
Mercifully, though, In The City Of Angels isn’t quite the spirit-crushing wrong turn it was shaping up to be. Inevitably, for an album of its era and provenance, there are some insurmountable obstacles to listener enjoyment. In A Lifetime is indistinguishable from the kind of music deployed to soundtrack Shannon Whirry’s discreet 80s porn scenes, and the arrangement of Hurry Home (Song From The Pleiades) is pendulous with overstatement. Accentuating the positives, however, Anderson’s lyrical concerns are as touchingly utopian as ever, before or since: the power of love, the indomitable force of nature, the sanctity of life (If It Wasn’t For Love, Sun Dancing, New Civilization). Trite? Maybe. Sincere? Indubitably.
Hold On To Love, also released as a single and rather surreally co-written with Lamont Dozier, is infernally catchy, while the video is worth tracking down if only to see Jon Anderson fronting a male dance troupe. Siberian Khatru it isn’t.
