Review
Blue Horizon’s best moments are the first and last songs, “Take It Back” and “All There Is To Say,” respectively. Both songs are progressively layered, AOR-styled compositions, nothing too high-energy but interesting enough to take notice. The guitar melodies are sweet-toothed, ditties a pirate would hum while exalted in the daydreams of rum. It’s the bluesier, straight-forward tunes, for instance “Deep Blues,” that groan out like generic and tired geezer rock.
The middle of the album leans more on AOR than progressive ingenuity, songs are geared for a Moody Blues/Toto fan’s ear. And no matter which song, the guitar leadwork of Muddy Manninen and Andy Powell is, for lack of a better word, fantastic. That is worth the price of the album alone, especially if you like the music arranged during Clapton’s solo years or the Gilmour-led Pink Floyd of the ’80s. Perhaps the multi-layered backing vocals of the choruses are a bit much but they are still well done. But it’s a better place than unimpassionately retreading the past. In this way most of the album is a bluer horizon.
