The Alan Parsons Project
Eve

I remember years ago when a dear friend and I would turn over the cardboard and joke about the three beautiful women... "Bwah, how pimpled!"

I know people often criticize those who start talking about memories, but good music lives off them, it's what makes it loved because it recalls splendid or sad moments of one's life... so much so that I want to talk about memories. I open the case: inside, serious as two Jedi knights on Tatooine, two bearded men wander among the many ochres that color the mythical "Ruelle de la Fonderie." Beautiful, right?

The first time I placed the vinyl on the turntable (dot dot dot), the needle running through the grooves (line line line) brought strange sounds to my ears (dot dot dot): back then I didn’t understand, now I know what it was, that obsessive Morse code plea for help opens the first real '70s song of my life, "Lucifer." Obsessive loops of a melody that gets into your head and heart: for me (used to the excellent domestic singer-songwriting) it was something new. In hindsight, it's an excellent instrumental, typically Parsonian, with the unsettling repetition of the same theme, a path already tested in previous works (an example is "The Voice" from "I Robot"). Back then, I simply liked it.
I don't know why, I waited days upon days before listening to other tracks… but I remember great curiosity in wanting to know the voice of this Alan Parsons.

The strange thing, yet well-known, is that with ten albums now under their belt, his voice is still something I haven't quite deciphered, so much is it disguised, when it's there, by choruses and various vocoders (wow, what a super alliteration...), but then you wonder why it was a project...
The sharp voice I discovered to be Lenny Zakatek introduces "You Lie Down With Dogs," a strange and enjoyable track with filtered choruses and typical guitar riffs from ballads. The sense of subterfuge is also provided by the lyrics (“You are a stupid woman, but I love you,” “You lie down with dogs, getting up with fleas. Get off and find yourself another lover”). The intro that leads to the following track, along the same lines, is very beautiful: “I'd Rather Be A Man” features bassist David Paton on vocals and always confirmed to me the idea of an obsession, or why not an anticipation (Eve, in addition to being a name, means eve) for God-only-knows-what... it talks about a woman, again, like throughout the entire LP, a woman with a corrupt soul from which the man distances himself; very loosely, the summary is: “I'd rather be a man than stain my soul like you; blame it on the apple tree, but you don’t fool me: your jeans are tight, but the butt's flabby. I'd rather be a man because I wouldn’t want to be like you.”
Turn the page… Next is “You Won’t Be There,” a beautiful and sweet ballad performed by Dave Townsend, minimal on drums and delicate on guitar. This time it talks about the other side of the woman, and it's a love song… “Because, if you love me, why do you have to leave me? When I need you, you won’t be there.” The song closes with a sort of unidentified grate that connects it to the last track on the side, the beautiful “Winding Me Up” (featuring Chris Rainbow, a skilled performer of many gems from the Alan Project), closing this hypothetical trilogy of the fair sex. This time the feeling is one, as the title suggests, of excitement: the man is confused, out of women because of the woman, but not because she’s particularly strong, but because she caught him off guard, exposing his false behavior.

You flip the vinyl, but the male anguish continues: once again Lenny Zakatek, with a great voice, in the role of someone who doesn’t want to get attached to a woman and suffers terribly when spending nights alone (“I am damned because I love you…”). Musically, a very nice song, with Ian Bairnson (the trusty guitarist) and Stuart Elliott (drums) in great shape.
But how does the woman live this situation? The only album where this happens, a she (a lady she, Clare Torry directly from the marvelous vocalizations of the dark side of the Moon) is at the microphone to encourage her better half of the sky, to fully live her life, daring more and not allowing the man to make her head spin…
And if a man must be, let there always be a “Secret Garden”: the beautiful instrumental opens up an ocean of horizons on love and leads to the last track, again with a female voice (the talented Lesley Duncan). "If I Could Change Your Mind” is a poignant ballad, where the melancholy for what wasn't grates the liver: “I can’t deny being alone since you left… Oh, if only I could make you change your mind…”

Beautiful album, ultimately; a concept once again between two opposing worlds as “I Robot” was, to underscore once again the great work of Alan Parsons and the trusty Eric Woolfson, resulting in at least five excellent LPs in the seventies. I remember a certain satisfaction from the very first listens. I remember the joy of my father who introduced me to them.
I always remember, and with pleasure.

With care, I place the vinyl back in the blackest sleeve and close the cardboard: the three beautiful women with their nets and pimple-like souvenirs of who knows what event are still there, in their wait…