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Babe Ruth - Babe Ruth CD (album) cover

BABE RUTH

Babe Ruth

 

Heavy Prog

2.95 | 50 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

ZowieZiggy
Prog Reviewer
2 stars After such a tranquil album as "Amar Caballero", "Babe Ruth" is coming back with a more serious and rocking album.

Several songs have this heavy-blues feling which are dominated by the wonderful, the powerful voice from Janita Haan whom I have compared several times with Janis Joplin ("We People Darker Than Blue").

Before that song, the album started with a fine and heavy rocker: medium tempo, hard riffs and again, a superb vocal exercise from Janita. She is really outstanding in her job. The other band member who is deserving a mention here is definitely the keyboards player, Steve Gurl.

But this promising opener, is followed by an average funky-pop tune which brings us unfortunately back on earth ("Somebody's Nobody"). We'll get even lower with "A Fistful Of Dollars". The band already played a Morricone theme on their debut, but this one is pretty hard to listen to.

Another good song from this album is the upbeat rocking "Jack O' Lantern" although it reminds me seriously "Hang On To Yourself" (from Bowie) but the problem of this work is that good songs are submerged by some real poor ones. The nadir being the hard to bear country-rock "Private Number". Press next.

Some fresh Spanish guitar is the highlight of T"urquoise", but this gentle acoustic part is far from what can be expected from a band that is categorized as heavy-prog although "Babe Ruth" gets us there with "Sad But Rich". An infectious guitar riff and heavy bass finally turn me on. Janis's phantom is also hanging over this good track.

The closing "Duchess Of Orleans" is a fine way to close this work. Beautiful mellotron lines, poignant vocals as usual of course and superb guitar are all combined and guarantee a strong delivery. It is one of the best songs from this "Babe Ruth" album. To summarize my opinion, I would say that this album holds some good songs but some weak ones as well. The balance being quite easy actually. An average album (five out of ten) rounded down to two stars. It is slightly better than "Amar Caballero" though.

ZowieZiggy | 2/5 |

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