LADY

This is a solid heavy-rock album. Keyboards are pumping joyfully like in the Heep 's best days. The space-rock music of their debut is far away but it is replaced by some very good hard-psychedelic mood. I can't say if it is for the best but "Lady" has plenty of interesting songs.

The opener reminds me the classic "River Deep, Mountain High" immortalized by Ike & Tina Turner. Keyboards play a major role in several songs, but I like them particularly in "Music Machine". Really a good piece of hard-rock music. Vocals are better than during most of the songs : they are devoted to Klaus Hess which is an improvement in comparison with Gottfried Janko ("Scratches On Your Back" already suffered from these). Very powerful rhythmic section but the organ sound is just a wonderful counterpart to a great guitar work. A highlight.

Back to some psyche mood with "Make Me Feel Better". I really wonder if bands do it on purpose with their choices of the song titles. Because, this one does not really make me feel better. As long as the instrumental parts are concerned, it is a good track; but vocals are horrible.

"Jane" is in great shape during "Wishdream Lady". A fantastic and extremely rhythmic number . The harder "Eloy" is not far away but it is not the first time that these two bands can be compared. Another crazy hard-rocking psychedelia. The problem with this album is that "Jane" is alternating the best and the worse. The latter being the vocals from Gottfried Janko which, again, are very poor during "Lord Love". They almost ruin this otherwise good song.

The instrumental parts are again gorgeous. This backing organ and the hyper-powerful guitar solo are indeed fabulous. A highlight but I don't understand why Klaus Hess or Peter Panka do not have a more important in terms of vocals. They do a decent job on some other songs of this album and would have easily replaced Janko for "Jane" 's sake.

I wouldn't talk too much about the funky/soul "Silver Knickers" which is just a filler even if organ stands out here. One could also have dreamt of another closing than the mellow "So, So Long" but all in all this is a good album deserving three stars.