NEUE STERNE

The final studio album proper by Anyone's Daughter, "Neue Sterne" accentuates the pop influence that was always around, but again without sacrificing any musical integrity. Several tracks certainly could have had hit potential in those early 80s, but still present alot of fine chops.

As with their second, self titled album, a few songs on "Neue Sterne" were redone better on live recordings, particularly the two openers, "Der Plan" and the title cut. Both of these parlay the band's natural melodic instinct into concise expressions. All the trademark playing remains, just in a more conventional structure. "Der Plan" is one of my favourite AD songs - its sinewy tune expressed by Bareth and his accompanists simply carries me off. Viel Zu Viel is built around a monster hook that openly competes with contemporary bands but with AD's added soloing skills. "Wieder weiter" is more rock than pop to be sure, and allows Ullmer to really let er rip on organ, while "Puppenspiel"'s minimalist keyboard figure is absolutely haunting, marred only by a sense that it could have developed a bit further.

The latter part of the disk includes more than a few morsels for the old fans and is almost entirely instrumental. It starts with an ode to Tangerine Dream in "Conzequenzen", followed by the classically structured near-instrumental "Illja Illja Lela". The latter in particular is a master's patchwork of related ideas and contrasting tempos, some heavy, others spacey. The album closes with "Reprise" which fittingly draws on themes from some of the previous tracks and includes sparkling jazzy playing by Ullmer and one of Krupp's best solos on the album. Some of it was recycled in a cut called "Carrara" that appeared on at least one live AD album.

From an artistic perspective, no album I can think of achieves such a fine balance of pop and progressive. For that reason, and its German vocals, it comes as close to 5 stars as anything from the band's catalogue. In the end, Anyone's Daughter never achieved that elusive 5 star quality in which each track augments the others, but to have produced 4 great studio albums in the eighties was a feat even Eloy did not attain. Sadly, they split up shortly after, and the reformed 2001 group is basically a "name-only" proposition. But there was no reason why this album could not have made them "new stars" of the German scene.