Artist: Wetton & Downes
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2006
Rating: 1.5/5
“Rubicon” is built on confessions about life’s temptations, tied to Julius Caesar’s historic crossing of the Rubicon and his famous line, “The die is cast!”, before he pocketed Rome. Chances are every one of us has crossed the Rubicon at least once in life,…
But what does it look like when Wetton and Downes tag along for the ride? The two gents serve up 10 tracks and, once again, managed to cobble together a solid 50 minutes of music. Funny, right? With a predictable template that even a toddler can see through by now, that’s honestly hard to justify. Well, not entirely. Thanks to Downes, the lads often find a way to stretch the songs out with longer atmospheric piano intros and outros.
This album really takes wing with the opener The Die Is Cast. And you instantly think: “Whoa, this is it!” The track is punchy, has excellent production, and puts a classic rock riff front and center. It’s draped in the typical keyboard cloak, but the main thing here is of course the signature multi-part vocals, stringing together gorgeous harmonies that sparkle in all their glory in a polished chorus. The riff is actually nothing special, but these two iconoclasts just know their stuff (when they feel like it). Following up with Finger On The Trigger confirms that we may have a fresher, wittier and more dynamic album on our hands than Icon I (2005). From here to the end of the album, there’s not a single fast, properly “rockin'” track left. So the next 8 songs are ballads and half-ballads. Mostly they lean on heavy keyboard support and vocal arrangements, with the odd “accidentally lost” Mitchell guitar solo sneaking in here and there. Of these ballads, the third one is definitely still welcome – Reflections (Of My Life). But when the same experience repeats several times in a row, it gets seriously annoying, because suddenly we’re stuck in a string of ballads, the album loses its dynamics and turns predictable, boring and offers the listener a musical snack that’s simply too easy to swallow. On To Catch A Thief and Tears Of Joy, Wetton duets with The Gathering singer Anneke Von Giersbergen. Without her these would be pure “fillers”, but as it is, the lady sweetens the situation somewhat with her sensual, heavenly, angelic vocals. The album hits rock bottom with the “filler” Shannon, which took over from the “goofy” Hey Josephine on the previous Icon album. Wetton and Downes tried to mask the song’s lack of invention and its “ring-around-the-rosie” arrangement by tucking strings with ethno-folk elements into the backing. Among all these lightweight creations, The Hanging Tree stands out in a good way (finally!). It completely wins you over with its atmosphere. Here at last comes alive that touch of melancholy that has always clung to Wetton’s voice and harmonies, both in Asia and on his solo albums. The rhythm template on percussion and the splendor of the added synthesizers on this track remind you that two masters were in the studio when this album was made, after all. They also pull it off with “Asia” tunes in the choruses of the (once again) slowed-down The Glory Of Winning and Rubicon, but the album’s ending somehow waters down too…
Just how minimal a role the otherwise top-notch musicians, guitarist John Mitchell (It Bites, Arena, John Wetton Band, The Urbane, ex-Kino, ex-*Frost) and drummer Steve Christey (Jadis), have been given can be felt in the absolute dominance of keyboards across the album, the simple additions of the most basic rhythm templates, and of course the song structures, which are mostly ballad-like. Wetton and Downes do leave Mitchell some room to solo, neatly cast into the compact song structures, but then what would a guitar even be looking for among the album’s pop ballads? That means Wetton and Downes wrote the entire material completely by themselves.
This is an album for everyone who loves to bask in gorgeous vocal multi-harmonies, vocal contrasts and soft pop balladry. Wetton’s weakened voice is nicely “patched up” and “prettified” in the production, so it sounds totally confident on the record. Just as the voice lost its power, which “Rubicon” skillfully hides, both musicians have apparently lost their inspiration, or “affinity”, for sturdier “rock-style” songs, the kind the listener gets hungry for very quickly once the album’s first two tracks have spun. Icon II is nothing special at all. Money aside, it simply makes no sense that Downes disbanded Asia with Payne, because the uncreative Wetton he works with today, with his repetitiveness and burned-out inspiration on the Icon albums, is a real nightmare. By stamping out albums so eagerly, the two cut the odds that Asia in the reunited classic lineup will ever release a good album, if they release one at all, while boosting the odds of the hypothesis that this Asia “reunion” in the classic lineup is just a source of quick cash. How easily business can cloud an individual’s artistic core! Wetton and Downes have the experience, and on “Rubicon” they prove once again what skillfully trained bluffers they’ve become. No more, no less.
Lineup
John Wetton vocals, bass guitar, classical & acoustic guitar
Geoffrey Downes – keyboards, vocoder
John Mitchell – guitar
Steve Christey – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Hugh McDowell – cello
Ian McDonald – flute
Anneke Von Girsbergen – vocals
Production
John Wetton & Geoffrey Downes
Track list
1. The Die Is Cast
2. Finger On The Trigger
3. Reflections (Of My Life)
4. To Catch A Thief
5. Tears Of Joy
6. Shannon
7. The Hanging Tree
8. The Glory Of Winning
9. Whirlpool
10. Rubicon
Album length: 50.27
