RED PLANET BOULEVARD

"Sorcery at their command"

Lana Lane seems to be an almost unstoppable force in music. 2007 saw yet another great release from the band. The previous Lady Macbeth album broke with the band's long standing tradition of opening and closing each album with an instrumental, and on the present album they jump straight into a rocking opening song, suitably entitled Into The Fire. However, somewhat in line with the old tradition, the album is wrapped up with a nearly eight minute long instrumental medley of many of the album's songs. Not absolutely original perhaps, I'm sure someone else did something similar, but a rather cool idea nonetheless. What is found in between is once more a very strong set of melodic, progressive songs. The very best songs come at the beginning and at the end of the album (the three first and the three last in particular, I would say), but there are really no weak moments as such to speak of. (Capture The Sun was performed live by Erik Norlander's fabulous side project The Galactic Collective and there very successfully merged with Norlander's solo piece Sky Full Of Stars.)

Red Planet Boulevard is yet another great album from a remarkably consistent band. Highly recommended addition!

After the powerful Lady Macbeth (2005)and another covers album (Gemini), Lana Lane and her husband have decided to change their musical course: gone were the Rocket Scientists members and several partners of before and the only remaining musicians were Dutchmen Peer Verschuren (guitars) and Ernst Van Ee (drums). According to the liner notes, Erik Norlander explains that he (and Lane?) wanted a more direct approach, a kind of Led Zeppelin sound, with only guitar, bass and drums to back up the singer, with some keyboards provided by the bass player in the vein of Zep´s John Paul Jones. So, yes, Norlander took up bass duties on all the tracks on this CD leaving his majestic keyboards more on the background. On some tracks, in fact, there are no keyboards at all.

The results? Well, it all depends with what you expect. But let me start by saying there is nothing like Led Zeppelin here at all. Sure, there´s more hard rock on Red Planet Boulevard than on all Lane´s previous releases, sometimes bordering the metal edge but often falling into the the AOR trap (just listen to a track like Jessica). On the instrumental side there´s little no doubt both Verschuren and Van Ee are excellent musicians and capable of delivering everything needed. In the studio at least. Norlander is competent on the bass guitar, but he is surely much more accomplished on the keys and when he does a solo (like on Capture The Sun) you only wish he could have done more of the same on other tracks.

The tracks in general are good, specially the first three: Into The Fire, The Frozen Sea and Capture The Sun (although the opener, Into The fire, sounds like a sped up version of Into The Ether, from her debut album). The Sheltering Sorrow and Save The World are also very good, maybe because, like the aforementioned three, they are more into the old symphonic rock /classic rock mold that fits so well for her voice. The others are ok, but below par. As usual,. Norlander´s production and engineering are simply perfect.

Conclusion: an interesting experiment. You can´t blame them for not trying to avoid the easiest formulas and risking something different. Still, I really hope those beautiful layers of symphonic keys were used more. Kind of a transitional album, maybe. Good CD..Sometimes very good. But hardly essential. 3 stars.