Trollheart

Back to the serious albums we go.

Album title: Renaissance
Artiste: Renaissance
Nationality: British
Label: Island
Year: 1969
Grade: C
Previous Experience of this Artiste: The hit single “Northern lights”.
The Trollheart Factor: 0.01
Landmark value: I doubt it has one, other than being the first album (I think) by a prog rock band to feature a female lead. Why did I always think these guys were Canadian?
Tracklisting: Kings and queens/Innocence/Island/Wanderer/Bullet
Comments: What can I tell you about Renaissance? Nothing really. I only ever knew of them, as above, from that single, and even then I didn't realise they were prog. It will however be interesting to hear a prog band fronted by a female singer – don't think we've had that before, Catherine Ribeiro excepted. Only five tracks, but two of them are in the eleven-minute bracket. Powerful classical piano intro to “Kings and queens” (that sounds like a real prog song title, doesn't it?) which is one of those eleven-minuters. Hmm, doesn't sound like a female when the vocals come in. Maybe Jane Relf shares vocal duties with her brother Keith, who used to be with the Yardbirds apparently. John Hawken is certainly giving it socks on the piano here. Excellent work. Okay, that is definitely a man's voice also on the second track, bit boppier but slowing down into a quite beautiful piano sonata about halfway through. I think Hawken must have been seen as the heart of this band; he's certainly driving most of the melodies so far. Speeding up now, again on the piano, great stuff.

Ah, now I hear Jane Relf's voice as we hit “Island”, a slow, acoustic guitar-controlled ballad with unsurprisingly some great piano although as the keys come in it shifts the pace up slightly, with a superb harpsichord solo halfway through. Actually, it's almost as if the song itself ends and then Hawken throws this in as an extra. I'm not complaining! And it just gets better as the harpsichord continues into “Wanderer”, the shortest track on the album at just over four minutes, and features the almost operatic voice of Jane Relf again. Very hippyish man. The closer then is the other eleven-minute opus, and at this point it would probably surprise me if it wasn't opened with a big piano – ah. It's actually sort of muted tribal drums that kick in “Bullet”, though the piano does come through. The song has a very African feel to it, with a kind of chant going on in the background against a pretty funky piano line. It features Keith Relf back on the vocals. Ooh, harmonica! Always like harmonica. Some really nice soft guitar on this too. Weird effects near the end, very atmospheric.

There's an extra track here on the Spotify copy that doesn't appear anywhere on their Wiki page, but it's only a short one, so I'll include it, not knowing if it should be there, or if it's a bonus track or only available on reissues or something. It's Jane again on vocals and it's a nice sort of uptempo bluesy tune called “The sea”.

Favourite track(s): I like everything here.
Least favourite track(s):
Overall impression: A pretty impressive debut, though if a selling point was to have been that they had female lead (I don't know if that was the plan, or if things just happened that way) then maybe they might have used her voice on more tracks. A real talent though in John Hawken, who really makes this album.
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