JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

Most of the legendary line-up is there. After longs years of solo careers for some of them, some Jefferson Starship or simply Starship for some others, they decided to join again and delivered this album. IMO, the Airplane made a big mistake when they stopped between "Volunteers" and "Bark". These two years sounded like ages and lots of fans just forgot them. The gap now is over fifteen years; so who can still be interested in JA ? I do not know.

The opening track is a nice rock song for most of it. "Freedom" is a beautiful track : nice piano and guitar work. Needless to say that Grace is great on the vocals, right ? She is again wonderful in this jazzy-rock and soft ballad. The album goes on in a pleasant mood but nothing great, I'm afraid : "Solidarity" is a good rock song : the best number on this effort. But that's it for this album.

"Ice Age" is a useless jazzy tune which leaves me rather dubious about this album and the intention behind it. Should they really believe that their old fan databse was going to jump and by this record just because it was a JA release ? I can tell you, at the time of release, this album have never drawn my attentin and I guess I am not the only one in that case.

The bottom is reached with "Madeleine Street" : a syrupous ballad unworthy of the Airplane. What a pity to go that low ! "True Love" sounds miserable as well. FM music, could you believe ? The bluesy intrumental "Upfront Blues" won't add anything to the Airplane grandeur : very poor. Even Grace can not save a track like "Now Is The Time" : the album goes on and on with the same tasteless sound and feeling. I really feel sorry for this but I can't help : this is not good at all.

"Too Many years" reminds me of a Neil Diamond song. How could the Airplane go that low ?

The band shouldn't have released this album. It is really a blunder. Almost boring during these fifty four minutes or so. Their fame would at least have been intact. Anyway, thank you guys to have delivered such nice pieces of music and thank you Grace to have provided me with so much pleasure to listen to your marvelous voice during al those years.

Unfortunately, this is the album too much. Here and there a good song (like "Common Market Madrigal" one of the shortest song here and "Panda", the closing number being less miserable than the rest of the album). One little star.