A SONG FOR ALL SEASONS

I started out with Renaissance through a gig at UMIST (Manchester, England) in a rather lively venue which faltered after the first number... Can you fix the sound? Err, no, it's all this glass, er, um WE THINK YOURE LOVELY ANYWAY ANNIE... and we were off. That would have been 1977ish so that meant Novella. As it was where I started, it was that album which ended up being a favourite. My ventures into earlier albums were tainted by poor pressings (which accidentally made their way onto cassette with the offending sections faded out and in). So my head was in this era and quite looking forward to the new album.

While something of an easy listening version of the Renaissance sound, the key elements are there: soaring vocals, busy high register bass playing, arrangements that move around in a song, with tempo changes, orchestras leaping around then changing to piano by itself (The Day of the Dreamer perhaps being the stand out track).

Unfortunately there are a couple of problems: the naff cover - and perhaps these days it is easy to forget how much the album cover was part of the overall experience of an album - to be held, read, inspected, sniffed and puzzled over and the dreaded Aphex Aural Exciter which gave the overall sound a peculiar phasy echoed sound which rather than making it stand out seemed to blur things.

Other issues - rather pedestrian instrument arrangements (dire guitar strumming verse) on Closer Than Yesterday which let down some good vocal work, they let Jon Camp sing on Kindness (which was not); BHOA should have stayed off the album as it is too obviously a TV theme tune a la The Likely Lads; She is Love is a skipper - more weedy Jon Camp vocals on a weedy love song thing; Northern Lights is ok.

Just when it seemed all was lost, the Song for All Seasons track rescues us and brings us back to classic Renaissance.

I suppose the real test is that it has languished in the attic for nigh on 20 years with only a couple of plays in that time so that has to make it a 3 star max - but on revisiting it recently I find I do want to listen to it again.