Review of album by Martin Popoff, taken from his book " The Collectors Guide to Heavy Metal - Volume 1: The Seventies"

Max Webster - A Million Vacations
(Anthem '79)
All is silky, ethereal, and crisp as winter snow on Max's most polished
piece of studio jewelry, the band's lightest footprinted excursion. A
Million Vacations chimes clear as a bell, the album lovingly layered
with keyboards, buoyant with bright guitars and lush, letter-perfect
harmonies. Highlight of the collection comes with what proved to be the
band's biggest hit Paradise Skies, a masterwerk of dynamics and
uncompromising professionalism with one of the most gushingly enjoyable
drum sounds ever plucked from, then tweaked for, the airwaves. Other
aural sculptures that spot and dot Max's moving target of offbeat
inversion include the whacked-out Rascal Houdi, the live and unkempt
Research (At Beach Resorts), the spring water-pure Charmonium, and last
but not least, the good feeling boogie rockin' title track. The sounds
on this truly awesome head trip simply ebb and flow as if the band were
wrapped in a dream, all the while firmly rooted in an earthly and
knowing pride in its obvious accomplishment, creating high upon high,
working with a shared love of quality craftsmanship, eye askance to big
brothers Rush for professional guidance. The final result is evident
within the grooves, rhythms which just sing with enthusiasm, no small
thanks to the album's state-of-the-art Maxmix. As history would have it,
A Million Vacations is largely considered Max Webster's quintessential,
defining work, most likely due to its maturity, accessibility, and
seemingly elliptical but somehow comfortable cohesion, not to mention
the (Canuck) hit status of no less than four songs: Paradise Skies,
copasetic pop hummer Let Go The Line, airy prog masterpiece Night
Flights, and to a lesser extent the title track. But to my mind, putting
side such base and shackling commercial concerns, the record is merely
yet another masterpiece comprising a body of work that baffles, elates,
provokes and charmingly, good-naturedly pokes fun.