It's easy to dismiss out of hand, considering it an extension of the slick professionalism of , only not written completely by . He collaborates with everyone from to , relying on recordings cut at various times in the mid-'80s, which makes its scattershot effect perhaps not so surprising. Still, that scattershot approach has its charms, especially when it results in winding epics like the collaboration But even with songs as good and interesting as that, the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren't entirely unexpected by , but that didn't make them any less frustrating. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine