A SONG FOR ALL SEASONS

Novella was an underrated album, as it contained the wonderful "Can You Hear Me", while the rest of the album couldn't reach that height, it's still a pretty darn good album and worth getting (and in fact, you only need to hear their awful 1980s offerings of Camera, Camera and Time Line to see that Novella is miles better). Of course the moderate popularity of the band in the US was starting to slip, which I guess had to do with disco (punk never really had much of an impact in the US) not to mention the transformation of FM rock radio from underground progressive to commercial AOR had a lot to do with it. So it's no surprise that A Song for All Seasons pretty much was the end of the road for American success. Strangely they were starting to get a small amount of UK success with "Back Home Once Again", smack in the middle of the punk era. How did that happen? I understood The Enid was able to withstand the punk-era releasing albums well into the 1980s due to the punks taking a liking to their music, and Steve Hackett also weathering out this era probably due to dissatisfied Genesis fans who disliked where the band was headed without him. Anyways, it's clearly a transitional album as they still continue with lengthy pieces, but with shorter pop songs designed for radio airplay. "Opening Out" demonstrates they can still make great material, and not too different from what they've done before. "Day of the Dreamer" and the title track demonstrates how they can still make epic material in 1978 despite being smack in the middle of the punk-era, while "Northern Lights" and "Back Home Once Again" were obviously short, pop- oriented tunes. As obviously Renaissance never bought in to the punk movement, much like Genesis, recording more pop- oriented material was the way to go. At least here they hadn't completely abandoned prog. I was surprised to see much of the album is actually quite good, even the more pop-oriented moments. It's no Scheherezade or Turn of the Cards, that's for sure, but nowhere as bad as Camera, Camera or Time Line. Still A Song for All Seasons has good material worth hearing.