Review from Q (Magazine, not me)

Q Magazine gave AO'B 4 out of five stars, which according to their rating system is "well worth a try". This review comes to us from Lois, and thanks again!   RO'B super-sleuths strike once more.

From Q Review magazine, March 1999, p. 100:

Richard O'Brien: Absolute O'Brien, Medical Records CD1

Review by Dick Quantick

Rocky Horror man who invented baldness as a fashion statement makes solo album.

Arguably, having written The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O'Brien should have followed his Crystal Maze successor Tenpole Tudor and eschewed the world of pop forever. Absolute O'Brien coincides with the 25th anniversary of Rocky Horror and it's a very different beast indeed. O'Brien calls it smooth jazz, but he errs. About half is sultry, distinctive Café De Paris stylings -- the splendidly-named Incubus of Love, the lovely I've Been There Before -- but the bulk resembles superior Berlin cabaret pop, notably One Hundred Dollars an Hour, which has exactly the right blend of Brechtian cynicism and cheap sentiment. Elsewhere he goes potty, most specifically on Running With The Noisy Boys, which is light but speedy metal. If this is jazz, it is grand guignol stadium jazz. It's theatricality, wit and excess hint at a new future for the former Meat Loaf employer: now that Jim Steinman is working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, he could write Bat Out of Hell III.