Saga is an example of the Foolish American syndrome. Americans, being more interested in ephemeral pop, are never as kind to progressive rock as they could be; as such, the Canadian band has charted semi-consistently in Canada and Europe throughout their 40+ year history, and is remembered in American for one hit, \u201cOn The Loose\u201d, from 1981.<\/p>\n
That hit came from their 1981 album, Worlds Apart<\/i>. Produced by Rupert Hine (no, Jason, we are not getting into an argument over his greatness right now), Worlds<\/i> comes off in the beginning as a tight progressive pop piece with pounding drums and particularly distinctive keyboard sounds. The problem is how fast it falls apart.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 KID: Mom, can we stop and get Rush?
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MOM: We have Rush at home.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rush at home = Saga.<\/p>\n
The problem is this: there are two great songs on this CD, and they were the singles: \u201cWind Him Up\u201d and \u201cOn The Loose.\u201d The rest of the album is a touch directionless; every progressive musician in the early-to-mid eighties is sound-checked (it\u2019s like name-checked, except you sound like them). There\u2019s \u201cTime\u2019s Up,\u201d which sounds like Loverboy gone prog, and yes, that\u2019s as terrifying as it sounds. \u201cFramed\u201d is Yes meets Triumph, but isn\u2019t as good as either of those two bands. \u201cAmnesia\u201d has a definite Thomas Dolby vibe around it. And \u201cNo Regrets (Chapter Five)\u201d is just too damn lugubrious and overdone. The sound is okay\u2014it\u2019s a relatively well produced disc, and the musicianship is competent. The songs after track three, however, are an anti-climactic letdown.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not normally a fan of cherry-picking songs of an album, but with a cherry tree like this, there\u2019s no real choice. After the two singles, stay worlds apart from this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":34752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[10846],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-46609","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-saga","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46609"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46609"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}