How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Value for Money
Advantages:
Good varied mix of musical styles, some a little unexpected
Disadvantages:
A couple of rather bland songs
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
It may have been more than 30 years since their first UK hit, but the Gibb Brothers seem to have reinvented themselves yet again. On this new album there's little in the way of strings, and even the keyboards and synths are used sparingly. Whereas some of their previous albums have veered close to formularised self-parody, with too much of the breathy, quavering vocals, this keeps the tendency well within bounds. And there's none of the white suit and medallion man 'Night Fever'-style dance stuff revisited, either.
An extended version of the title track, a Top 20 hit in the spring, opens the album. This must be their first single ever which isn't soaked in strings or brass, and just relies on acoustic and electric guitars and a rhythm section. Those Beatles comparisons aren't really out of place here or on track two, the rocking, McCartneyish 'She Keeps On Coming'. Likewise 'Voice In The Wilderness' packs a formidable punch; by the group's usual standards, musically it's not far removed from hard rock.
As Barry and Robin Gibb generally share lead vocals between them, it's good to see Maurice, the main musician among them, take centre stage on two songs - neither of which have his brothers within reach of a microphone at all. 'Man In The Middle', perhaps an autobiographical lyric, is a fine song, quite uncharacteristic of their usual style. His second, the more ethereal 'Walking On Air', is less distinctive, sounding a little too much like an imitation of one of ELO's less inspired mock-epics.
Robin likewise gets a chance to strike out solo, more or less, with 'Embrace' and 'Promise The Earth', a couple of mid-tempo synth-pop numbers that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the mid-80s. On one hand, perhaps they sound a trifle dated; on the other hand, they reinforce the theory that all three brothers have realised that they can still work as soloists, in a sense, under the group banner, as well as make records as a group.
For years they've trying to write another ballad as good as 'How Deep Is Your Love' or the sublime 'To Love Somebody'. Here they've come pretty close to it with the gooey but still rather nice 'Wedding Day', which opens with what sounds like an old-fashioned musical box, and which was tipped as a single. (I'm surprised a second single has yet to surface from the album). I'm not so keen on 'Loose Talk Costs Lives',which only a guitar solo rescues from blandness. Perhaps most surprising of all is the jaunty 'Technicolor Dreams', a clarinet-driven, music hall-type singalong with just a hint of the Beatles' 'When I'm 64'.
Despite a few so-so moments, this is a varied, well-rounded collection, and good value with 14 tracks and 61 minutes playing time. With some of these numbers, you'd be hard-pressed to recognise them as the Bee Gees. Maybe they're not that fashionable any more, but who cares. Not only are they now recognized as probably the most respected songwriters in pop of the last forty years after the Beatles, but they've also well and truly outlasted most of the opposition!
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Where I Came In is another paradigm of the timeless brand of white soul and pop that has become their trademark. Thirty years and 110 million albums have yet to ...
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