Mike Oldfield - Man On the Rocks (Super Deluxe Edition) (2014)

"Let me out, I can't breathe/ Gotta get out of this concrete hole," are the first words on Mike Oldfield's first album in six years – a cri de coeur accompanied by a video shot on a beach in the Bahamas, where he has lived since 2009. His concrete holes, clearly, are not as others'. But that doesn't impair the listening experience – if you accept that Man on the Rocks is the pop equivalent of a historical re-enactment society, it's oddly engrossing. The sound recreated here is the 1970s rock of Toto and the Steve Miller Band: all amiable, mid-tempo guitar amblings underscored by wistful thoughts about escape and freedom. Oldfield plays guitar – often quite crunchily, as on the Tom Pettyish opener, Sailing – and young English vocalist Luke Spiller sings, broodingly. Dreamy throwbacks such as Castaway and Dreaming in the Wind shut out 2014 entirely, as does Meat Loafish doomsday rocker Nuclear. Overall, a curious but likable diversion from his multilayered new-age work.