UNDER A VIOLET MOON

The second Blackmore's Night album doubles down on the Ren Faire medievalisms whilst smoothing out the harder edges of the previous album, yielding an overall more sonically consistent sound over the course of the album which somehow manages to feel poppier and more accessible without being appreciably more commercial. It's still all quite pretty, but it feels like it lacks some of the imaginative departures of the previous album, and feels like a piece knocked out in response to the success of its predecessor. Certainly, there are stronger live performances of this material which inject a bit of life into them that the studio album sometimes lacks.