Saga
Behaviour

Following the favorable commercial success achieved with "Worlds Apart" (1981) and "Heads or Tales" (1983), two distinct factions formed within Saga: the singer, guitarist, and bassist were more convinced than ever to continue distancing themselves from the band's progressive, instinctive, and virtuosic origins in favor of a conscious approach to sounds and styles that appeal to the masses, even at the cost of sidelining part of the band's personality, creativity, and innate sophistication.

Keyboardist Jim Gilmour and drummer Steve Negus eventually threw in the towel. "Behaviour" was hardly released (1985) before they made their (rather) amicable departure. The choice of the new producer might also have been the so-called sticking point, falling on Peter Walsh, fresh from collaborations with Simple Minds, Boomtown Rats, and many other notable names in British chart pop.

The conditions for an uninspired, low-key, maintenance-oriented work marking a timid end of a cycle were all set: in my opinion, that's not the case... the album instead (surprisingly) delivers a magnificent sound (for those years), deep and rich, elegant but not cloying. The melody writing peaks are sumptuous, and Michael Sadler has never sung better. Gilmour entirely eliminates the solos, but the keyboard sounds (his or Sadler's or bassist Jim Chrichton's... in Saga, three members take to the white and black keys) are captivating. Ian Chrichton is steered by the producer towards shorter and more melodic guitar solos, few notes but good ones, to sum up, eschewing his typical virtuoso flurries. The result is an enhancement of both expressiveness and melodic creativity: guitar interventions and solos on this album are fantastic.

These are personal opinions, of course, primarily connected to my particular taste as a listener. In the twenty studio albums released over thirty-two years, Saga has mixed the basic ingredients differently over time (progressive, hard rock, pop, funk, British folk, even alternative on one occasion), and thus the blend found in "Behaviour" evidently strikes a special internal chord of mine, an ideal form of melange between accessibility and inspiration, melody and rock emphasis, catchiness and instrumental brilliance.

My favorite songs (out of the two hundred or more published by Saga... not just from this album, as mentioned earlier) are, in order of appearance, the second track "Take a Chance", the sixth "You and the Night" and the subsequent "Out of the Shadows".

"Take a Chance" swaggers with personality, inspired by a brilliant rhythmic intuition from Steve Negus, ingenious in its simplicity: the unusual and elegant groove with the kick drum hitting first on the downbeat and then on the upbeat indelibly marks the track, over which Sadler's invocations, Chrichton's dazzling lead guitar bursts, and the resolutions and chimes of Gilmour's thousand keyboards weave and intersect.

"You and the Night" satisfies the more romantic and charming (but classy) side of the band's appreciators: long synth resolutions create an enveloping sound carpet, initially free, then cadenced and enriched by a crescendo of percussion. Sadler and then Ian Chrichton navigate this long night wave in hyper-melodic fashion, the first singing his love lyrics, the second making his instrument sing, saturated with round and perfectly controlled distortions.

"Out of the Shadows" starts spectacularly with powerful guitar blasts followed by an extensive and tense vocal line, truly successful. The first two to three magical minutes, unfortunately, then fall apart a bit as the band gets tangled in a subdued and somewhat unsuccessful ending, in my opinion, because they didn't manage to organize a bridge, an essential harmonic modulation to make the piece "breathe" and renew the listener's desire to hear the initial chords again. The guitar solo is deadlier than ever, with Chrichton's pick extracting a thousand overtones and harmonics from the strings, struck without mercy and "worked" masterfully by the fingers and vibrato arm, thanks to the fully saturated amp tubes.

The small and talented guitarist roams skillfully in other parts of the album, for example, with the thrilling outro solo on "Promises", a perfect up-tempo, and this time a central one on "What Do I Know", then chosen as a single and video, with more than decent success in stores and on MTV, enough to surpass "Behaviour" in sales over its predecessor "Heads or Tales". To support Sadler and increase the commercial appeal of the track, there are also female vocals, courtesy of Sharon Benson, a fellow Canadian. Honestly, I consider this one of the less successful tracks in the collection... for example, Sadler's voice has an entirely different flavor in the finale "Once Upon A Time", with beautiful lyrics about the loss of innocence, sung with heartfelt emotion.

On their sixth album, Saga greatly reaffirms themselves, flirting with pop but with moderation and, above all, style, refining their writing skills, executive synthesis, sound quality, and elegance. But they still don't manage to break through definitively (though they do in my heart, already well-disposed). The world at that time was at the feet of Michael Jackson and "Thriller". Alas.