With Alan Parsons producing, Cockney Rebel serve up another grandiose offering from the artier end of glam. Even as more vapid acts like the Gary Glitters of this world were taking glam's tackiest aspect and making cheap pop trash out of it, the group produce a masterpiece of the form. The cabaret of the previous album has given way to sleazier venues (the tinny synthesiser wail at points in Mr. Soft suggests a circus or funfair, for instance), and Steve Harley is left wondering about how everything meaningful is rendered tawdry and vapid over time (as in Tumbling Down - "Look what they've done with the blues?"). The same would eventually be true of Cockney Rebel of course, but with this final release of their golden age they briefly stood against the oncoming entropy.