^^Some good points Sooty, but I disagree with you about the "Flow". This album is no different than reading the individual Poe stories would be, that was the Concept that binds the whole work together. As far as different styles between the songs, I love that aspect of this recording, the variety fits with the the tone of the stories as well. I look at the songs as "Musical Paintings" of the stories, and in my books they hit all the marks on this one, even the sprawling instrumental is excellent, not many bands have the chutzpa to put a song like that on a rock album.
Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson are the Project, but they brought in a host of great session musicians to play on all of their albums.(Parsons wanted to create music with all kinds of musicians outside the normal band structure, his work with the Beatles and Pink Floyd among others whetted his appetite for being in total command and control of what was recorded. Woolfson wrote most of the lyrics and played a lot of the keyboards as well, so between the two of them they created the Project, and I am glad they did.
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They are a unique band and have stood the test of time for me at least, and "Tales..." is by far the least commercial album they ever made.
I got the idea to explore them next because the song "Ammonia Avenue" (ironically posted last in this thread) was sampled at the 2:30 mark in a Kanye West song I like. I liked the actually song and decided it would be cool to review a band that's completely fresh to me. Plus I also read your intro LG and it was a good selling point for the band! 
As always I'll start with the debut:
