TUSCANY

People differ on where Renaissance's classic period came to an end. There's probably some hardcore oddballs who think everything went wrong after the original lineup got replaced more or less entirely after their first couple of albums, leaving the Annie Haslam-fronted version of the band to sail on like the Ship of Theseus - but most people would agree that it's from Prologue onwards that the band really started to come together, with the Haslam/Dunford/Camp/Tout/Sullivan lineup yielding their strongest work. Arguably, that version of the band was running out of steam a little at the end of the 1970s - though I think A Song For All Seasons is charming and Azure d'Or badly underrated.

Whilst Azure d'Or might be a controversial album, there's much more of a consensus about what came next - Camera Camera and Time-Line involved a reconfigured lineup making a radical shift in their sound in an attempt to adapt to changing times. They were hardly the only 1970s prog band trying to fit in with the New Wave 1980s with such a reconfiguration, but it's safe to say that they didn't succeed to the extent that Yes or Genesis did.

Subsequent years saw the band entering dormancy, with some mid-1990s attempts to rekindle the flame in fits and starts, with both Annie Haslam and Michael Dunford fronting different lineups yielding material which didn't win over many advocates. "Annie Haslam's Renaissance" tended towards the poppy, whilst "Michael Dunford's Renaissance" put out two albums - one of which, cheekily, was called The Other Woman and credited to just Renaissance - which just consisted of Dunford on acoustic guitar and a grab-bag of session musicians accompanying Stephanie Adlington on vocals. (The Other Woman tended towards pop-rock just as much as Annie's effort, whilst the following Ocean Gypsy was basically a cover album of old Renaissance tracks.)

However, come 1998 Haslem and Dunford were back together, with Sullivan in tow and John Tout making several recording sessions in a guest capacity, and the end product was this album - initially released in 2000 in Japan before Giant Electric Pea were able to release it domestically. The big question is whether it really measures up to the band's glory days. Esoteric certainly seem to think so - in their lavish series of Renaissance reissues they've skipped straight from Azure d'Or to this, setting aside Camera Camera, Time-Line, and "Annie Haslam's Renaissance" and "Michael Dunford's Renaissance" entirely.

And there's some justification for that - because unlike the two 1980s Renaissance albums, or Annie and Michael's respective mid-1990s projects, this feels like a natural continuation of the musical evolution Renaissance were experiencing in the late 1970s, a true followup to Azure d'Or which none of the other "Renaissance" albums in between managed to be. As with that album and the preceding Song For All Seasons, Renaissance back off from longer compositions and orchestral backing here, and the instrumental sections aren't so complex as in their glory days, but Annie Haslam's moving vocal styles and tight songwriting carry the day.

There is some musical development to lend it distinctiveness; Dunford is clearly still strongly taken with the acoustic guitar here, his efforts with his own Renaissance sub-faction - the Ocean Gypsy cover album in particular - perhaps helping him find ways to incorporate more acoustic, folky notes into a Renaissance-like context. In addition, Annie and Michael share all the songwriting credits, whereas on the last two albums of the 1970s Dunford and Jon Camp's compositions tended to sit side by side, so there's a certain aesthetic cohesion here. As far as the rest of the contributors go, I think the keyboards from Mickey Simmonds (and, when he's sitting in, John Tout) are worthy of note, because by 1998 synthesisers had access to a broader range of sounds than they had in the 1970s, and the Renaissance sound is adapted to the times nicely.

If you think Renaissance's late 1970s turn towards shorter and less complex material was still charming in its own right, you'll likely enjoy Tuscany; it's the sort of thing they might have produced had they stayed together and stuck with that musical direction all the way since Azure d'Or. If, on the other hand, you think it was all a bit downhill after Scheherazade or Novella, you may find it's less to your taste.

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