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Rating:
This is an album full of flaws as much as good intentions, with cute ideas poorly focused and executed with excessive approximation. And it's an album that adds nothing new, neither to the then (and now barely) enigmatic figure of this Jas Mann, the only man-national park, nor to his musical genre, this sort of radio space-rock.
The issues are more or less the following: Mann's voice, shrill and overly self-satisfied, has nothing to do with the fascinating darkness of the verses of his famous "Space Man"; his inevitable, "geographic" tendency to drag out words when he sings, especially the last two syllables, due to a pronunciation too English for my ears; not having any track with the power of "Space Man", which is why the single was the anthem with the boogie around "All The Money Is Gone," simply quite ugly.
Wanting to examine the work as a whole, the shortcoming would seem to be more a matter of design: there would be less than half the ambitions of "The Boy With The X-Ray Eyes," as well as the conviction and, why not?, the vain swagger of the multiethnic Jas.
As if he had lost confidence in himself, he prefers to rely on the teachings of the old greats, not reworking his own recipe but reproducing it verbatim, allowing himself only the quirk of arranging according to space and cold standards. There is traditional glam rock, the boogie of the aforementioned "All The Money Is Gone," a cover of Mott The Hoople (which, go figure, will be the second and last single), and a series of ballads (the aforementioned cute ideas but poorly executed) that recall, some better than others, the lunar David Bowie of "Ziggy Stardust," without ever succeeding in being as alluring and hypnotic. And if we consider that, in the same decade, the Duke had come up with much bolder sounds than these in "Earthling" and the famous "1.Outside," then we understand: it was time to close the zoo.
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