FIRST BASE

Babe Ruth´s debut album First Base is an excellent album IMO. I expected nothing and got a nice surprise. If you like female fronted prog rock this one´s a real treat. It´s very different from groups like Renaissance and Curved Air though as Jennie Haan is a very original and distinct vocalist. She seldom sings with soft angelic voices like many other female fronted acts. More about this later.

The music is a mix of hard rock and progressive more symphonic moments. A lot of the instrumental runs are done simultaniously by the guitar and piano. The music is very melodic and powerful. Most songs are melodic hard rock songs but The Runaways and the Zappa cover song King Kong are a bit different. The Runaways is the only song where Jennie Haan sings with a soft voice and here she shows she has a beautiful voice for this kind of singing too. The song is very symphonic building to a climax in the end. Very nice. As I am a big Zappa fan I´m very happy that Babe Ruth has chosen to cover King Kong. It´s one of the more complex Zappa themes rytmically ( well most of his songs are very complex) but Babe Ruth pulls it of with ease. There are some nice solo sections here too.

The musicians are fantastic in my ears. Especially the guitarist Alan Shacklock has a very nice feel to his playing. The most original thing here is the banshee rock mama vocals from Jennie Haan though. I´m exaggerating a bit here as I really think she is a great singer. I´m not normally into female rock singers as I think they often force their vocals to be raw, but Jennie Haan has attitude and plenty of it. She is a great asset to this band.

The sound quality is very good and the songs are well displayed here.

Note the beautiful Roger Dean art work too, it´s a real treat.

All in all First Base is an excellent prog rock album with lots of surprises along the way. It rocks, it has quiet moments, symphonic moments and first and foremost it has a great distinctive female singer. 4 stars is a matter of course for this brilliant little gem. Highly recommendable.