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Rating: Good |
Featuring two of the Alan Parsons Project's finest songs, the sweet ballad "Time" and the undulating "Games People Play," "The Turn of a Friendly Card" remains one of the group's most enjoyable albums. Parsons' idea, the subject of the album's six tracks, revolves around the age-old temptation of gambling and its stranglehold on the human psyche.
On "Games People Play," vocalist Lenny Zakatek sounds compelling and focused, giving the song a seriousness that helps realize the album's concept. With "Time," Eric Woolfson takes this luxuriously melodic ode to the passing of life to a place that transcends all the band's other slower material. The breakdown of human willpower and our greedy tendencies are explored in the final track, "The Turn of a Friendly Card," which is divided into five distinct sections. "Snake Eyes," sung by Chris Rainbow, is the most compelling of the five pieces and ties the recording together.
As on every Parsons album, there's an instrumental, in this case an interesting track aptly titled "The Gold Bug." Like most of the band's instrumentals, the flow and rhythm simulate the album's overall tempo and concept, serving as a welcome interlude. While short, "The Turn of a Friendly Card" gets to the point and doesn't let up when it comes to executing its idea.
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= Track List =
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