THE WHITE LADIES

Trace's swansong was a concept album about a farmer's wife who is spirited away from her home by the spectral White Ladies of the title to live a wild and carefree life with them. Her husband considers her to have been abducted, and sets off to rescue her, but even once she is brought home she eventually decides to leave to join the White Ladies again, though it is unclear whether this was really her choice.

The story, as outlined above, is communicated in a rather heavy-handed way at the start of each side of the album, with Legend Part 1 and Legend Part 2 consisting of Harry Schafer's rather monotonous narration over the band's playing, leaving the rest of each side to consist of mostly-instrumental keyboard showboating on the part of band leader Rick van der Linden. Hetty Smit's vocals at one point on the album are a high point for me, but on the whole the album doesn't quite manage to hold my attention all the way through. It's on a par with the other Trace albums really - a great pick if you want an album based around showing off van der Linden's keyboard skills, but I don't personally feel it holds up to repeated listens.