A SONG FOR ALL SEASONS

Most Renaissance fans agree that the band went into a bit of a decline prior to them entering hiatus during the 1980s. Many place the point where the band went into terminal decline somewhere after this one - the consensus seems to be that things had definitely gone stale by Camera Camera, whilst the status of Azure d'Or is a bit more controversial.

That said, it was pretty evident that Renaissance would need to change their sound - they'd released a string of four studio albums from Ashes Are Burning to Novella which all ploughed much the same furrow, and it was time for a shift. So, Michael Dunford picked up his cobweb-strewn electric guitar and brought it back into become a central plank of the Renaissance sound for the first time since Prologue, and the band settled down to produce an album of catchy, accessible shorter numbers as was the wont of many prog bands facing the double whammy of emerging new musical styles on the one hand and changing fashions on the other.

That isn't to say longer songs are gone, mind - Day of the Dreamer and A Song For All Seasons offer the album's mini-epics, and with Day of the Dreamer quoting some themes from Opening Out there's a certain amount of artful interweaving going on here. Nor have their symphonic roots been lost - the Royal Philharmonic is here to provide orchestral backing.

Still, it's fair to say that this is the first Renaissance album for a while where the shorter songs are given the focus, and it paid off, with Northern Lights being a hit single and Back Home Once Again being picked up for the soundtrack of a TV drama. (The show was largely forgotten, but the extra exposure couldn't have hurt.)

With David Hentschel producing, it's probably no surprise that they sound just a touch closer to Genesis than previously, but both bands were deep enough in pastoral prog territory that some overlap would be inevitable anyway, and the shorter songs here are by and large good, though sometimes a bit cheesy. (Back Home Once Again, in particular, is a bit corny, and why the band thought that Jon Camp should sing lead on not one but two songs is beyond me.)

True to the album's title, the band were making an effort to adapt to changing times, and as far as prog bands adapting their sound in the late 1970s go, this is one of the more successful examples, though it sags just a little in the middle.

As with many Renaissance albums, early CD issues of A Song For All Seasons were rather lacklustre in execution, and that left me with a poor impression of it. The Esoteric remaster is strongly recommended if you are after this on CD, because it sounds fantastic and also comes with a live show from 1978 - extracts from it had been featured on the Dream and Omens release, but it's here that the full concert got an official release.