Three Ships

by Dave Connolly This is an oddity: a Christmas album incognito. Save a red and green stripe on the back cover, the outside packaging is conspicuously devoid of the usual holiday trappings, leaving the astute person to deduce from the track listing Three Ships' true intent. Further complicating matters is the fact that half of the songs are new compositions from Jon Anderson, none of which have holiday-related titles (unless "Forest of Fire" warms your holiday chestnuts). On listening to this, the songs themselves do little to clear up the confusion; while the traditional tunes ("Three Ships," "The Holly and the Ivy") are obviously Christmas songs, the new compositions are spiritual in Anderson's typically general sense and rarely address Christmastime directly. "How It Hits You," "Save All Your Love," and "Where Were You" might just as well have come from the Jon & Vangelis albums ("Easier Said Than Done," the album's single, was actually co-written with Vangelis). So Three Ships is really an album inspired by Christmas. Not a bad venue for Jon Anderson in theory, but someone must have been ding-dong merrily on high when they chose Roy Thomas Baker to produce it. Baker, best known for cramming synthesizer pop into tasty two- and three-minute parcels (the Cars, Alice Cooper), is an awful match for the ethereal Anderson. "Day of Days," which like "Easier Said Than Done" would have worked on the island-tinged pop album Song of Seven, is arguably the lone keeper from Three Ships. The Christmas songs are processed with synthesizers, overwhelming Anderson's voice most of the time, and the end result is a disappointing and superficial collection of Christmas classics (including one of the lamest versions of "O Holy Night" on record). As with In the City of Angels, also recorded in Hollywood, fans would do well to let Three Ships sail by.