Album Review

Bruce Eder [allmusic.com]

Night Flight was a direct outgrowth of Justin Hayward's involvement as a singer with Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and proved to be one of the lengthiest productions of Hayward's career, running to dozens of takes on certain songs with Wayne as producer. The title track -- the last to be recorded -- and ''I'm Sorry'' (the latter featuring some unusually jagged guitar) were also the hardest-rocking records on which Hayward had appeared since ''Question'' by the Moody Blues, a decade earlier. Wayne's production gave Hayward's music a leaner sound than had been evident on his prior recordings, with more use of pulsing synth pop-type accompaniments (''Crazy Lovers,'' etc.) and a thinner guitar sound (''Penumbra Moon''), while other songs, such as ''Nearer to You,'' were much more dance-oriented than anything Hayward had previous released, and all of the songs were more romantic than previous solo work by the singer/guitarist. Only ''Suitcase'' and ''It's Not On'' really sounded like his earlier work, and even they had more of a stripped-down band sound at their core. The album had everything going for it except timing, appearing as it did after the Moody Blues' reunion, while also sounding too different from the Moodies' work to appeal to more than a relatively small fraction of their fans.