TIME-LINE

You will recall that "Azure D'Or" was the goose that ate the golden egg laid by "A Song for All Seasons". Likewise, "Time Line" earns the dubious honour of beating a retreat from the advances made by the excellent "Camera Camera". It did so in a similar manner, by sticking to only shorter songs that lacked the requisite accessibility. This is Renaissance sounding like a lot of contemporary bands. Yet, unlike Azure D'Or, some of these numbers grow in stature with repeated listening, although it is admittedly hard to imagine many people on progarchives who would give this more than one airing! Moreover, the overall decline between albums was much less pronounced here since the bar was not set nearly as high.

The opener is actually a throwback to Renaissance Mach 1 in its combination of male and female vocals that I enjoy so much. It lives up to its title and helps the album take "Flight". "Missing Persons" and "Chagrin Boulevard" are both pretty fair new romantic styled tunes, and Richard the IX shows how versatile this formation is. The chorus is hard to shake. "The Entertainer" is one of the only other tracks that vaguely recalls the old Renaissance. It does suffer from a general pattern, apparent in the promising "Distant Horizons", of starting better than it ends. The old group would generally start slowly and bring you to an ecstatic appreciation level, but this incarnation gives all the good stuff at once, and then teaches the listener to accept what follows, with middling success.

Not a complete schlemazzle by any means, this 1982 effort pretty much confirmed that, in spite of a concerted effort, Renaissance missed its final time line. 2.5 stars rounded down.