EVE

The Alan Parsons Project: Alan Parsons, Dave Townsend, Chris Rainbow, Lenny Zakatek, Clare Torry, Lesley Duncan, David Paton (vocals); Ian Bairnson (guitar); Eric Woolfson, Duncan Mackay (keyboards); David Paton (bass); Stuart Elliot (drums, percussion); Chris Rainbow, David Paton and The Orchestra of the Munich Chamber Opera (background vocals). The fourth album by the Alan Parsons Project jettisoned the prog-rock weightiness of the band's earlier concept records in favor of a more subtle song-cycle about woman-as-temptress. In the hands of a misanthrope like Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, this theme would most likely cause great feminist offense, but keyboardist Eric Woolfson's lyrics wisely take a different tack. On "You Lie Down with Dogs" and "Damned If I Do," Woolfson's words repeatedly hammer home the point that women wouldn't hold such power over men if men didn't want it that way. In addition to Parsons, vocalists include Lenny Zakatek and Dave Townshend, and, providing the female perspective, Clare Torry and Lesley Duncan, whom Parsons had first worked with on THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. Musically, 1979's EVE continues the trend towards slicker and more commercial pop tunes that had begun on the previous year's PYRAMID, an approach that would flower into even greater commercial fruit with THE TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD.