The Wild Places - Streets of Fire

Following his stint in the group Metro with Sean Lyons and Peter Godwin, Duncan Browne turned up in 1978 with his first solo album since the dawn of the '70s. The Wild Places isn't much like his Immediate album Give Me, Take You — indeed, it's more like a lost Roxy Music album, or perhaps a lost Bryan Ferry record. It's electric, and the music has a sense of drama as well as beautiful melodies that were even better realized, with lush contributions on the synthesizer and related keyboards by Tony Hymas and a fierce guitar sound courtesy of Browne himself, aided by the up-front presence of John Giblin and Simon Phillips on bass and drums, respectively. The music runs the gamut from edgy progressive rock to straight-ahead rock & roll (the latter highlighted by "The Crash"), though Browne was at the top of his game, as both a singer and composer, working in an introspective, romantic vein, as on the killer title cut and numbers like "Roman Vecu" and "Kisarazu." [The 2000 Japanese import of The Wild Places combines the album with Streets of Fire.]