SCHEHERAZADE AND OTHER STORIES

I'm playing catch-up with Renaissance since I wasn't really familiar with the band back in the seventies. I gather though that this is considered the pinnacle of their career by many longtime fans. For the most part I would agree, although the birth of symphonic folk portrayed on their debut record way back in 1969 is still quite impressive today, and for excellence sustained across an entire album 'Turn of the Cards' edges this one out just slightly. I have this record along with 'Novella' and 'Turn of the Cards' on original vinyl courtesy of a visit to a small used record shop in New England a few years ago. The artwork on all of them is beautiful, but this one is possibly the best suited to the music contained within its folds as it clearly demonstrates the far-reaching folk and classical influences of the band during those years.

There are two notable differences over the group's previous work with the music on this album. First, original member Jim McCarty was completely gone from the fold by 1975, leaving Michael Dunford and John Tout to compose just about everything on the album, although bassist Jon Camp is credited with a handful of sections on the title track and the late Betty Thatcher wrote pretty much all the lyrics as she had with 'Turn of the Cards'. The second difference is more subtle but important, as the band for the first time didn't rely on any external classical pieces to enhance their songs. There are certainly plenty of obvious influences though as the album delivers the most ambitious and grandiose classical composition of Renaissance's long career with the massive twenty-four minute, nine-part "Song of Scheherazade". Tout's eloquent piano forays are plentiful throughout the album but they especially drive this song piece, along with Terry Cox' orchestral arrangements. Pretty much every individual section of the song holds up well as the Haslam relates the familiar tale of 1001 Arabian Nights, but by splicing them together the band was able to create an epic-length work with built-in tempo shifts and highlighted individual performances as the various songwriting contributors change with each section, along with the instrumental focus. The opening fanfare (appropriately titled "Fanfare") shows Tout capable of an energetic opening that combines piano, xylophone and symphonic (string, horn) arrangements set to rolling rock drums and bass peddle. The faint and wordless choral backing sets the mood for Annie Haslam's duet telling (I believe with Dunford) of 1001's back-story, the history of betrayal by the Sultan's first wife and the Sultan's resulting decree that he would take a lover each night only to have her executed the following morning. Haslam, Tout, and percussionist Terence Sullivan dominate the first half of the song with lush orchestral accompaniment and the occasional emergence of Camp's thudding bass, while Dunford takes a bit of a back seat providing vocals but only an understated acoustic guitar presence. As the song wears on Haslam's role becomes the dominant one as she relates both Scheherazade's seduction and Sultan's growing enhancement. This makes sense as far as the storyline goes, but if I had a criticism of the work it would be that the band deferred a bit too much to Haslam and Cox's arrangements to fill the middle parts of the song. The 'Festival Preparations' and 'Fugue' portions are rich with instrumental layers though, and serve to almost make up for the dimensional earlier parts. I also wonder if the "Festival" stanza is a bit too overdone as well, since it tends to distract from, rather than naturally lead to, the swirling "Finale" with it soaring vocals ahead of lush symphonic layers and what turns out to be an anticlimactic ending (pretty much everyone knows this story so the ending is no surprise). "Scheherazade" is an impressive achievement for what was basically a rock band, but given the capabilities of its various members I have to wonder what they might have been capable of had they not played it quite so safe on the arrangement, especially from "The Young Prince and Princess" and forward.

It's easy to lose the other three songs on the album in the limelight of "Scheherazade", but at least one of them ("Ocean Gypsy") ranks as a seminal Mk III Renaissance tune with its own lavish orchestral arrangement and a particularly endearing bass line to augment Haslam's continually improving vocals. "The Vultures Fly High" sounds more like what the band would record starting with 'Novella', shorter and tighter, more pop-oriented and simple tunes that seems to be aimed at creating commercial appeal in the U.S.

And while "Trip to the Fair" became an instantly-recognizable Renaissance song from the time it was released and on, I for one would have preferred not to know it was inspired by a date-night trip to a closed fairground by Haslam and then-boyfriend Roy Wood. The lyrics seem a bit trite and pretentiously contrived in that light, and would have likely stood up better on their own if Haslam had chosen to keep the inspirational event to herself all these years.

This really is an outstanding symphonic album with great attention to detail in the orchestral and band arrangements, and certainly anyone who has become accustomed to the band's sound will find the slightly mystic and fanciful Thatcher lyrics to be familiar. This is definitely a four star affair, but in the end many listeners will inevitably come to feel it doesn't grow the band's sound much from 'Turn of the Cards', so the 'masterpiece' label once again eludes the band. Very highly recommended though to progressive symphonic, folk, eclectic and 'art rock' fans as a virtuoso example of the sort of folk/classical melding the band's original members envisioned some six years before.

peace