ANYONE'S DAUGHTER

Now here is a real classic which has remained one of my all time favourites. ANYONE'S DAUGHTER blends the atmospheric calmness not unlike moments of CAMEL with the depth of GROBSCHNITT. Harold Bareth has one of the softest and nicest voices of all time. ANYONE'S DAUGHTER play a heavy German symphonic prog which offers some unbelievable tracks of picture perfect musical moments. "Ayone's Daughter" 's debut album is full of both complexity, moods and grandeur with excellent sound reproduction and amazing song writing.

For their second album, Anyone's Daughter eschewed the side long suite idea in favour of shorter more accessible prog songs. This isn't really neo - it came too soon for that anyway - and it isn't really symphonic, since the material does not stretch out a whole lot temporally. But it is an ultramelodic disc with excellent songwriting and playing all around. A variety of moods and tempos are struck, and the balance between guitars, keys, and Harald Bareth's warm tones is spot on.

Each of the 8 full length tracks is at least good, although it must be said that at 2 of the tracks are re-worked better on subsequent live recordings, those being the hits "Sundance of the Haute Provence" and "Moria". "Thursday" features sparkling themes on lead guitar courtesy of Uwe Karpa. "Superman" is a dazzling critique on self dependence in which Karpa's leads sound even more like Andy Latimer than usual. The definitive version of "Another Day Like Superman" comes closest to what AD were doing during the Adonis epic, and alternates between ballad and blazing, particularly Matthias Ulmer's synthesizers. "Enlightenment" is a monster ballad, while "Between the Rooms" plies a jazzy furrow for which the group became known over time.

While this album might disappoint some who were hoping for another "Adonis", it provides plenty of tasty licks and is if anything more consistent than the debut. Given the time period, AD was arguably one of the few relatively long lived prog bands keeping the seats warm during the progressive ice age.

Second release selftitled from 1980 from this little known band from early '80's. THis is my fav from them , even is more with AOr elements and has that arena aproach of their music, they still have symphonic prog pieces here. Less lenghtier then before, only one track is over 8 min, but hte rest even are all around 4-5 min are well played , well performed and with good musicianship all over. The sound is still bordering symphonic prog with some neo elements, not far from Asia MInor, Camel, Eloy. Some already classcs here like the brilliant up tempo Moria, with top notch bass lines and good progressive shifts, the instrumental Azimuth and the longest pieces from here Another Day Like Superman, shows Anyone's Daught in great form. For many the sound and the whole album is quite AOR, arena with progressive leanings, for me is a good early '80's symphonic prog album that will desearve from me 4 stars.

Some time ago I started a series of reviews here on Progshine with re-edition of Progressive Rock albums. The first one was of the debut album of the German band Anyone's Daughter so nothing more natural than the follow up is their second album Anyone's Daughter (1980).

Anyone's Daughter (1980) was originally released in 1980 by the labels Spiegelei/Intercord. This new edition was released in 2012 by the German labels Tempus Fugit/SPV in two different versions: CD and Limited Edition Picture Disc.

Anyone's Daughter showed in their first album, Adonis (1979), that Progressive Rock wasn't dead by the late 70's and that the genre had still strength to show new and good music. Anyone's Daughter (1980) shows how the band was able to maintain its own Prog sound but at the same time evolve and incorporate the new music of that time. The sound on this album is a bit more polished, there are more songs with vocals, the band began a transition that foresaw the arrival of Neo Prog just a couple of years later with bands like Marillion, Pallas and Twelfth Night.

Anyone's Daughter (1980) is packed with melody (like in the opening track 'Swedish Nights') but doesn't cast the Prog aside as we can hear in 'Thursday', 'Superman', 'Another Day Like Superman' (the best track on the album) and the closing song 'Between The Rooms'. Across the sound spectrum of Anyone's Daughter there are the pretty Symphonic ballads like 'Sundance Of The Haute Provence' (which, I would say, portrays very well the beautiful album cover) and 'Enlightment'.

'Moria' is an exception within the album, completely different from the rest, not only because of the Lord Of The Rings theme in the lyrics, but because of its modern kind of sound pointing to what would come next in their future albums.

As bonus content in this re-edition the CD has three live tracks that were recorded in 1980 during the tour of the album. The first, 'Superman' was recorded in Frankenbach, Germany and the other two ('Between The Rooms' and 'Sundance Of The Haute Provence') were recorded in Baden-Baden, also in Germany. All three live versions have high quality recording and work very well as extra for this remastered edition. The cherry on the cake is the booklet of the CD that apart from the lyrics has a great text (in German and English) by Stefan Oswald where he tells how the recordings of the album were done and includes many quotations from members of the band.

This new edition of Anyone's Daughter (1980) is perfect for you Prog fan who don't have this album yet in your collection or to the band's fans that don't have the CD version of the album!

Quality guaranteed!

(Originally posted on progshine.net)

This is the second album from ANYONE'S DAUGHTER released in 1980. Of their first classic four albums i'd probably rate this as my second favourite. Lots to like here though especially the first two tracks. Again we get a Neo flavour to the music before that genre even really existed.

"Swedish Nights" opens with sounds that build with synths out front. Vocals before a minute. Check out the drum work on the chorus each time. An emotional track for me and I really like the lyrics too. Speaking of lyrics, "Thursday" opens with these words : "Thursday in the library was the first day of my love, the girl that I been always waiting for came dancing through the door". This is so good as the story continues.The drumming again is fantastic and very active and the guitar rips it up after 2 1/2 minutes.This song is so uplifting, it really is. "Sundance Of The Haute Provence" opens with keys as reserved vocals join in. Synths after 1 1/2 minutes. Sounds like mellotron (it's not) before 2 1/2 minutes. A melancholic tune.

"Moria" features these quickly pulsating sounds with vocals. Catchy stuff. "Enlightment" is led by vocals and piano. This is mellow.Some Gilmour-like guitar follows. "Superman" is mid-paced with the vocals and drums standing out. Aggressive guitar before 3 minutes. "Another Day Like Superman" is eventually led by harpsichord-like sounds and fragile vocals. It kicks in before 3 1/2 minutes. Nice. The guitar solos then the synths as they trade off while the drums pound. Vocals are back before 6 minutes. "Azimuth" is a drum show to start then we get a full sound as it blends into "Between The Rooms". Guitar and keys lead then synths arrive before a minute. Vocals follow. It's fuller 3 minutes in.

Barely 4 stars.

A collection of pleasant, laid-back prog-pop that feels like a bit of a step down from the preceding Adonis - whilst Anyone's Daughter managed to hit a perfect balance between accessibility and progressiveness on that release, this time around they seem to have been striving to create radio-friendly, commercially accessible songs. The wistful, romantic themes of the album may appeal to some, though I personally find it a bit too twee and saccharine for my taste, and the soft rock approach was out of fashion by the time the album came out so I can't imagine it attained the mainstream success it seems to have been tilting for.

It's funny how previous reviewers used (chronologically) these ratings: 5-4-4-4-3. This is uncommon sight, but I am still unsure why such phenomena is happening. I plan to break i though.

Anyone's Daughter, a name that used to annoy me a lot, even their music (first two albums at least) I consider very great (first one even masterpiece). Indeed, because of their ground- shaking debut (at least for those Prog heads who had the chance to heard it, it probably wasn't commercial success), everything later is prone to be compared with it. Yes, even I will do such thing.

Still that super-melodic, mellow trademark sound of theirs (combination of gentle parts, unique vocals of Harald Bareth and keys, also unique). Except Moria, I hate that song. Not because it breaks the line and does something different than rest of the bunch that is 9 songs, but because it is sound of things to come - too 80s, too "whiny" bridge ("In Moriaaa") - it's remarkable how so short song can annoy me (and keep annoying) so much. The rest ? Equally adequate, with a bit of a penchant for Superman.

About four. Sadly, since this, AD would be slippery slope.

For their second album Anyone's Daughter left the legendary Brain label and were signed by Spiegelei, another specialized Kraut-Rock label, part of the Intercord Ton GmbH record company.The album, released in 1980, carried only the name of the band as a title and was the last one written in English from the band's early progressive years.

In ''Anyone's Daughter'' the German quartet left out the long, epic compositions for more comfortable and conventional songwriting always with a deep progressive content.Gone are also any kind of ELOY influences and the band recalls heavily the 75-80's GENESIS period, having a strong Proto-Neo Prog approach, while the symphonic tendencies remain present.But, while the songs are more easy-listening, the unique talent of the band forced them to write down some pretty nice light Symphonic Prog.The use of synthesizers is more apparent, the bass grooves become one of Anyone's Daughter's trademarks and some tracks have even some straightforward rockin' tunes.Still the tracks maintain a strong symphonic approach, the guitar leads and solos of Uwe Karpa are more than satysfying and, when needed, the music obtains a more complicated sound with light interplays and great floating synths.One though can not do else than miss the epic arrangements of the band's superb debut.

This is another very good album by Anyone's Daughter, much a product of its time, with the band flirting with the fashion of the time, creating more accesible but still impressive music.Recommended.

On the long run it may be a stretch to label this German band symphonic prog. Neo-Prog - or even Crossover-Prog - wouldn't be very unsuitable either, at least for this (2nd) album, which is not quite as symphonic as the debut Adonis (1979) that had a good side-long epic. The overall approach is slightly commercial and very accessible, the melodic songs are mostly in 4-5 minutes length with a strong dose of pop sensibility. But despite all the contemporary lightness this music clearly descends from the classic (symphonic) prog as many German bands did at the late seventies. The vocals remind me of ELOY's Frank Bornemann, or Wildschwein of GROBSCHNITT. The clean sound puts the emphasis on the melodicism of keyboards and electric guitar. One could think of Barclay James Harvest of the time, which was very popular in Germany.

A couple of songs deal with meeting a girl and falling in love, in a rather banal level, and the catchiest song 'Moria' draws inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien - as dozens of prog bands have done before and after. I'm glad there's also an instrumental (albeit very short one) and one longer composition (of unquestionable symphonic nature) to widen up the scale. There's not a single weak or unpleasant track on this album, but perhaps it's not exactly Anyone's Daughter at their very best. After this one they changed into German language. With a new drummer they brought a new spark into their sound on the excellent In Blau (1982).