With Work of Heart, Roy Harper goes deeper into his transition to ’80s pop, albeit with a bit of an “artsy” touch, that he began carving out with 1980’s The Unknown Soldier. Not a bad little album, just bad by Roy Harper’s standards. What little guitar there is is drowned out by the synthesizers and excessive reverb that’s a token of ’80s production, not to mention the addition of dubbed-over horns even.

Roy Harper’s lyrics sound very uninspired and lack the depth of his best work, exploring the simplest subjects and most pedestrian philosophical ponderings. And the fact is, Roy Harper’s withered soft voice (as much as I love it) is just not a suitable match for the bright and bubbly pop sounds of this album, which just makes the whole thing sound even more unnatural.

There’s still a bit of traditional Roy Harper weirdness that pops up in the songs sometimes that give Work of Heart some particular merit, such as the 21-minute long title track that changes suites throughout like many other Roy Harper epics and may be the biggest highlight of this album, but it’s not impressive enough for me to call this anything more than inessential, regardless of whether you’re a Roy Harper fan or an ’80s pop fan. Like many old artists, Roy Harper had difficulty transitioning into the ’80s and forced himself to adopt a popular style that wasn’t suited to his strengths out of fear of becoming irrelevant. No sense of real direction there, and the music confirms it.