TUSCANY

A reunion album from one of my top five fave prog bands of all time! I was quite excited about it. I was really glad to see the prog´s greatest female singer Annie haslam back in the fold with songwriter Michael Dunford plus John Tout and Terence Sullivan of the classic line up. Ok, tout does not play on all tracks and bassist Jon Camp is nowhere in sight, but there were enough old faces to make me think of a great record was in the making. I guess we were all expecting too much, maybe? Anyway, the results were not bad, but they were not too good either.

The CD starts quite well with Lady From Tuscany and Pearls Of Wisdom. I was happy to see that Haslam´s voice is in great shape after all these years and the band was not far behind. The second specially have a fine fluid piano (played by Tout) that reminds of Renaissance´s early stuff, around the Prologue era. However, the remaining tracks are not nearly as good. Not bad, but simply not up to the band´s name and history. Of course nothing here is as bad as their 80´s output, but with Dunford writing and with such musicians you´d expect something more symphonic and engaging. And all you got is a collection of short songs with rather bland lyrics.

The band even tries something different with Life In Brazil, but the results are not very convincing. Besides, the rhythms chosen (a mix of rumba and calypso) for most of the tune are more caribbean than brazilian. Only on the last part of the song the percussion does have a kind of samba feeling. Fortunatly the last track, the 7 minute long One Thousand Rose, brings back the old flame and it is one that is par to their best stuff. I wish the whole CD had the same punch.

So in the end I have mixed feelings about Tuscany. If they had better songs and were a little bolder on the arrangements this could be THE comeback album. As it is I found it to be quite pleasant and not exactly what I was expecting from such remarkable and classic band. Rating: sopmething between 2,5 and 3 stars. I´ll round up to full three stars because Haslam´s voice makes all the difference and she can turn even the weakest stuff into something good just because she sings it.