HERE WE ARE

3.5 stars really!! Jan's second album is a logical following of their debut but songs are a tad shorter. This group is a borderline inclusion for they were more of a hard-rock with progressive leanings than a prog rock per se. Also the lyrics did not have special attention from band members but they are sung in very correct and accentless English. they may be compared to Birth Control , Wallenstein's early albums, Uriah Heep etc...

in the usual tradition , this second album opens with a lenghty track (Redskin) with the usual blistering keyboard lines and good guitar heroics. The singing has gotten better due to personel change. Many very correct tracks such as Dandelion, Moving, Waterfall make this an enjoyable album but the peak of the opening track is not reached a second time.

The repertoire CD holds extra tracks from one non-album single and they add up quite nicely to the album content with Daytime and Hangman as very solid tracks. The second single had two album tracks but in a very shortened version: these bonuses hold limited interest. All in all , a good rock & roll album but should we not call this Prog'n Roll????

AN EXCELLENT SOPHOMORE FOLLOW-UP

After their excellent first album TOGETHER, JANE came back one year later with HERE WE ARE! This album follows the same pattern than the first one by mixing space rock, psychedelism with hard rock guitar bravado. A new bassist WOLFGANG KRANTZ took over CHARLY MAUCHER and plays guitar as well.

The album starts strongly with quite a unique tune REDSKIN , a 8mns extravagant odyssey of groovy beats accompanying a psychedelic guitar solo before some spoken words appear with nice organ texture...and female vocals sounding like indian chants (yes the title of the song is REDSKIN, i told you!). At least this is a very different track that i cannot compare to anything else. You may like it or you may not; that's not here to leave you indifferent for sure.

OUT IN THE RAIN is pure JANE at its best: a wonderful melodic ballad well sung with a beautiful mellotron soundscape and of course another emotional guitar solo just playing the right notes, but the ones which will touch you deep inside if you are into melody.DANDELION and MOVING follow in the same style, slow paced with a lot of organ and more beautiful guitar sounds. KLAUS HESS guitar technic is not about playing 20000 notes a minute, this is about making his guitar cry and transport deep emotions from his playing to your inner self making you feel good. A guitar with a heart so to speak!!

WATERFALL is another mid-tempo spacey track with again beautiful guitar, angelic mellotron and....those delicate female vocals! Oh my gosh!! such a beauty! and this wonderful symphonic ending is sure to bring you to heaven prog!

LIKE A QUEEN is another dreamy symphonic piece, albeit short but showcasing perfectly the JANE spirit and how good they can be at producing the best romantic melodic prog you will ever hear, sometimes reminding me of NOVALIS. HERE WE ARE the title track is more on the rock side with strong guitar riffs, but not that hard, don't worry!This song was the single of the album (the fanous 45 rpm of the time). An excellent opportunity for KLAUS HESS to show us how he can carry a song with a long powerful guitar solo getting more and more furious towards the end, but still played so tastefully!

HERE WE ARE is the perfect complement to TOGETHER. My edition includes 4 bonus tracks, the single versions OF DAYTIME nad HANGMAN from the first album and HERE WE ARE plus REDSKIN from this album. Nothing to hurt you!!

Albums like TOGETHER and HERE WE ARE should get 200 reviews on a site like PA. This is prog music at his best deseving more than 5 reviews. So please stop listening to ANIMALS, CTTE and SEBTP for once and give a chance to these 2 first albums from JANE. You will be rewarded!

4 STARS!

I was quite impressed by "Jane" 's debut album. Especially with "Daytime". A fully Floydian song which transported me into the "ASOS" days. Luckily enough, there will also be such a song featured on their second album. "Out Of The Rain" features the same atmospheric mood and those brilliant keyboards sounds.

I can't really say the same about the opening number. Heavy blues rhythm, monotonous and with little feeling. But I'm not in blues really. Might just be therefore. The ethnic chants (American Indians) featured at the end of the song are not for me either even if they are in-line wih its title ("Redskin").

We are reverted to some good psychedelia with "Moving" as well as "Waterfall". I far much prefer this side of "Jane" 's music. Heavy organ like "Heep" and wonderful guitar breaks. If you lioke this mix, you'll like the early "Jane", hat's for sure.

To enjoy this album, you'll need to be attracted by the early years of psychedelia. This album sounds outdated but it is a very nice journey to the old days of prog. Their debut album was really great and superior to "Here We Are". The title track and closing number is another very good moment. It ends in a wild chaos of organ and furious electric guitar. "Heep" could have released this.

The CD version holds several bonus track of which the single version of "Daytime". One of their best ever song. Even if it fits the single format and has been reduced by almost five minutes, it is always a pleasure to listen to this jewel.

A little star less for this second album. Three stars.

I will reiterate "Febus" quest for more exposure for "Jane". I quote : "Albums like TOGETHER and HERE WE ARE should get 200 reviews on a site like PA. This is prog music at his best deseving more than 5 reviews. So please stop listening to ANIMALS, CTTE and SEBTP for once and give a chance to these 2 first albums from JANE. You will be rewarded!".

He was damned right! (although I stll listen to "SEBTP" and "CTTE"). Their albums are all available on CD format and you can them for 8? (+ shipment). So...

At this point in their prolific career, JANE was essentially a psych blues outfit with progressive attributes. Later on they would become a space rock band with progressive attributes. In other words, the prog was always a stalwart side dish to the revolving main course. Since I find blues rock to be generally tedious, this is not my favourite JANE era.

The opening track exposes every flaw in the style - overly extended jams, numbingly repetitious riffing, and organ abuse, to name a few, and I can also add nonsensical vocal patterns presumably attained through detailed study of Native American culture. This sort of political incorrectness run amok was responsible for the Atlanta Braves baseball team's mascot Chief Noc-A-Homa who lived in a "teepee" near the bleacher seats. But after all this was only 1973, and all in fun I'm sure. That's what JANE was about after all. "Moving" and "Waterfall" are cut from the same cheap cloth, though luckily shorter and a bit less predictable.

Luckily the album also originates pointers to what would become a more subtle and melodic style, chiefly in the form of "Out in the Rain" and the title cut, without sacrificing the heavy rock aspect. "Dandelion" is a pleasant ballad that seems influential in the German symphonic movement. "Like A Queen" experiments with ambiance for a rare moment at this stage of the band's development. Already these exercises overshoot the incessant excess of their predecessor.

My version includes 4 bonus tracks of which only "Daytime" is essential, even if in its single version, originally appearing on "Together" a mere year before. Actually it is essential in its single version, purged of its overbearing tendencies and distilled to the master stroke it was meant to be.

Out of affection for these skilled buffoons, I'm going to round up this time. They may not have gone far in their first year as a recording outfit, but, if I may paraphrase a bit of Tao, wherever we go, here we are.

Tagged by over-enthusiastic die-hards as 'Germany's answer to Pink Floyd', Jane have carved a long and successful career out of their hardly-original brand of cosmic rock. Whilst fellow teutonic rockers Grobschnitt and Eloy have sailed a more overtly progressive course, Jane's sound has always been rooted in a more bluesy approach, blending meaty riffs, trippy lyrics and heady concepts into a series of enjoyable-if-hardly- outstanding albums that, stylistically speaking, owe much to a handful of British and American outfits. Jane's second album after the psychedelic rock of debut release 'Together', 'Here We Are' is basically more helpings from the same bowl, though if anything this sophomore effort sports a slightly mellower vibe. This is showcased on the album's ethereal opener 'Redskin', which features shimmering keyboards and strange, echoey vocals, and on the stand-out piece 'Waterfall', a textured, carefully-crafted rocker Imbued with an almost mystical atmosphere and some catchy guitar hooks. Nothing special then, but this should more than please the undemanding psych-rock aficianado's it's aimed at.

STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2O12

Jane's 1972 debut would sit comfortably on the same shelf with the earliest efforts of other stalwart German acts like GROBSCHNITT, ELOY and SATIN WHALE, all (mostly) unpretentious rock-and-rollers with a heavy emphasis on organ and guitar. Their sophomore album, released a year later, was a little more adventurous, but for a group like Jane that wasn't necessarily an improvement. To these ears their less challenging but harder rocking early work sounds better in retrospect than some of the band's later stabs at musical sophistication. But this album at least found a decent point of balance between their limited abilities and loftier ambitions.

Missing here is the dogged intensity of the first LP, and the singular vocals (to say the least) of Bernd Pulst, whose voice sounded exactly like you'd expect from someone named Bernd Pulst. The merely adequate interim singing of drummer Peter Panka leaves no impression whatsoever, good or bad, and as if to compensate for the resulting loss of identity the band made attempts to refine the music itself, adding a Mellotron here and a chorus of female backup singers there, even including an occasional touch of acoustic nuance, in songs like "Dandelion".

The writing too was more melodic in a primitive sort of way, with the faux-strings in "Like a Queen" and "Out in the Rain" bringing a little symphonic depth to Jane's typically beefy sound. But in keeping with what should have been the band's official motto (Keep It Simple, Stupid) the music shone brightest when dragged through a muck of instrumental blues-rock behind Werner Nadolny's grinding Hammond organ and the assertive lead guitar of Klaus Hess. The adrenalin really kicks in during the album-ending title track, closing the set with a suitable bang (although the song itself ends on a curious whimper).

As popular as they were in the 1970s, Jane was always an easy band for discriminating Progheads (and especially Krautrockers) to dismiss, as I did for many years. But after several decades the same music, in all its turgid sub-Floydian heaviness, can be just as easy to appreciate, not least for its nostalgic pull toward a lost age of rock guitar heroics. Sure it's uncomplicated stuff. But I'll take the authentic sow's ear of their first two albums over the imitation silk purse of the band's proggier efforts any day.