John Martyn: Sapphire (Island). Considering the allure of his releases in the early '80s, Scotland's John Martyn comes up surprisingly shallow on his latest release, an album that can do no better than weakly recycle previous ideas and sounds.

Gone is his enjoyable blend of keyboards, sultry guitar lines and rough vocals: Martyn's music now sounds weary with no sense of the psychological probing that gave his songs a menacing but appealing edge.

Simply put, there's little here to admire.

The album reaches its low point with an inexplicably trashy rendition of Over The Rainbow, marking Martyn as the Wizard of Snooze.

(Rating: E)

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This review was published in the Calgary Herald of Saturday, 5 January 1985.