LADY

Although this fourth album from Jane is a little inferior to the previous three, this is still a worthy album. Fellow reviewer is a bit severe with his rating , but there is a lack of inspiration that is not compensated with the superb sleeve artwork (the same guy who had done the superb III cover). The return of Janko behind the keys did not produce an inspiration rush but this did not stop Jane from selling many albums.

Side 1 is made of relatively 5 short and straightforward rock tunes with no highlight although Music Machine is the better one . Side 2 stars with the much better Lord Love and then moves to the highlight of the album, Midnight Mover. With these two songs , we find the usual greatness of Jane with blistering guitars and great organ lines making for what I call great Prog'n Roll. Unfortunately , this is too short because the album closes with two tracks that resembles the songs on side 1. As usual with Jane, references to similar group such as Birth Control are evident. Both German bands enjoyed quite a success in the mid-70's.

This is yet another good Jane record but may not be the best to start investigating this band .

Jane's well composed heavy-prog was never accompanied by great vocalists, as this album, 'Lady', can attest to. The music here is very, very good indeed, but lead vocalist Gottfried Janko sounds kind of like a gruff blues singer who's hit 'rock bottom' - but man, he surely makes up for it with his driving keyboard work, particularly on the Hammond Organ. He also uses a synthesizer to good effect. This time around all tracks were composed by lead guitarist Klaus Hess (who also sings lead on 'Music Machine'), and this actually shows - the songs sound more focused and tight, and quite 'complete'. The tracks are enthusiastically performed, many tempo changes, interesting arrangements and addictive melodies. The only thing they've done wrong here was give Gottfried a microphone, but the more you listen to the album, the less 'offensive' his voice is - it almosts sounds like he sports some sort of profound innocence - he can be really passionate.

Top marks go to : 'Music Machine', 'Lord Love' (Gott's vocals actually work perfectly in this tune) and 'Midnight Mover' - the latter being a classic space-rock ramble, with swooping synths and hard-core jammin'. Once the taste has been acquired for the vox, the entire affair is an excellent listen. After this album, Jane released a fine slew of excellent albums, reminiscent of Floyd and Eloy (comparisons are inevitable - apologies to those who disagree). I rate 'Lady' as a 4, just.

REMEMBERING THEY WERE GERMAN!

After the disastrous, plain horrible JANE III, the band decided to go back to their roots with LADY. Even if it is a big improvemnet over its predecessor, LADY is not a complete return to form as writing inspiration doesn't run as high as it was on TOGETHER and HERE WE ARE. Once again for the fourth time in as many albums we have a new line-up. KLAUS HESS on guitar and PETER PANKA on drums are still present of course, but bassist MAULCHER left the band for the second time (he'll be back many years later) replaced by MARTIN HESSE and a new keyboardist GOTTFRIED JANKO has been brought on board who also will be the lead vocalist.

A new line -up with another new vocalist, what kind of JANE music are we getting this time? Well, LADY brings some part of the old JANE sound, thanks to return of the keyboards but nowhere we reach the heights of DAYTIME, HANGMAN and other OUT IN THE RAIN. You still have also sadly some remnants of americanised music, not in the form of blues but worse what we have is groovy funky almost soul-lish like in the track SILVER KNICKERS! Can you imagine a kraut band trying to sound like JAMES BROWN?? Just plain horrible! But thanks god, this is the only really disastrous track of the album.

Not that there are too many gems either as SO SO LONG sounds so corny as as JANE is trying to clone themselves by trying hard to go back to TOGETHER grandeur but to no success. Even the guitar solo from HESS is very tame and predictable.You will find a lot of straightforward rockers like the opener WAITING FOR THE SUNSHINE or SCRATCHES ON YOUR BACK with nothing memorable except some good guitar parts as usual, but they never get expanded like on the first 2 albums! Once again, the new vocalist is very average, i don't know what was their problem to find a decent singer.

This is with the next album that the quality of the vocals would improve when the band, mainly when HESS and PANKA decided for an in-house solution by covering the vocal parts themselves, and for the better,but we are digressing here now! The best songs of LADY can be found in the heart of the album with the beautiful ballad MAKE ME FEEL BETTER with its fantastic guitar solo or LORD LOVE another ballad with nice organ and vocals thet -finally- fit the music.

MUSIC MACHINE is JANE hard rocking but the good way like on TOGETHER with nice organ soundscapes and a fiery guitar never forgetting to be melodic at the same time. (WISHDREAM) LADY would become one of JANE staple in concert for years to come. This is a middle of the road album not bad, but not satisfying either as there are quite a few forgetable tracks. If only had been on the same level of MAKE ME FEEL BETTER or MUSIC MACHINE.

But great things are on their way as we are entering the ''classic period'' with their next 3 superb albums .

2.5 STARS,

This is a solid heavy-rock album. Keyboards are pumping joyfully like in the Heep 's best days. The space-rock music of their debut is far away but it is replaced by some very good hard-psychedelic mood. I can't say if it is for the best but "Lady" has plenty of interesting songs.

The opener reminds me the classic "River Deep, Mountain High" immortalized by Ike & Tina Turner. Keyboards play a major role in several songs, but I like them particularly in "Music Machine". Really a good piece of hard-rock music. Vocals are better than during most of the songs : they are devoted to Klaus Hess which is an improvement in comparison with Gottfried Janko ("Scratches On Your Back" already suffered from these). Very powerful rhythmic section but the organ sound is just a wonderful counterpart to a great guitar work. A highlight.

Back to some psyche mood with "Make Me Feel Better". I really wonder if bands do it on purpose with their choices of the song titles. Because, this one does not really make me feel better. As long as the instrumental parts are concerned, it is a good track; but vocals are horrible.

"Jane" is in great shape during "Wishdream Lady". A fantastic and extremely rhythmic number . The harder "Eloy" is not far away but it is not the first time that these two bands can be compared. Another crazy hard-rocking psychedelia. The problem with this album is that "Jane" is alternating the best and the worse. The latter being the vocals from Gottfried Janko which, again, are very poor during "Lord Love". They almost ruin this otherwise good song.

The instrumental parts are again gorgeous. This backing organ and the hyper-powerful guitar solo are indeed fabulous. A highlight but I don't understand why Klaus Hess or Peter Panka do not have a more important in terms of vocals. They do a decent job on some other songs of this album and would have easily replaced Janko for "Jane" 's sake.

I wouldn't talk too much about the funky/soul "Silver Knickers" which is just a filler even if organ stands out here. One could also have dreamt of another closing than the mellow "So, So Long" but all in all this is a good album deserving three stars.

The Hanover quartet of Jane was beginning to sound more American than German by 1975, yet another reason why Krautrock elitists have always ignored them. The Kosmische Musik geek inside me wants to likewise turn up his nose, but after belatedly taking some time to explore their music in depth his teenage garage-band doppelgänger simply won't allow it.

The band's fourth studio album saw yet another line-up shuffle, this time arguably to their benefit. New vocalist (and keyboard player) Gottfried Janko possessed a more distinctive singing voice than drummer Peter Panka, something a prosaic outfit like Jane desperately needed (imagine CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, after years of expensive therapy). Janko's keyboard playing didn't have the same raw vitality as his predecessor (and eventual replacement) Werner Nadolny, but it was a moot point: the bedrock of Jane remained guitarist Klaus Hess, still in good form despite the weaker material here.

The music itself was nowhere near the creative acme of Progressive Rock, despite the occasional synthesizer squirt. And the songwriting is rarely strong enough to be entirely convincing four decades later. As usual the band was at its best when flexing its instrumental muscles and sticking to the riffs, as heard in the "Midnight Mover" jam, not coincidentally also the longest cut off the album. And the intro to the title track is an air-guitarist's fantasy come true: one of those quintessential '70s anthems able to drive an acne-damaged high school dropout to headphone ecstasy.

It would be easy for a musical snob like me to simply accept bands like Jane as a guilty pleasure, and move on. But isn't that akin to damning them with faint praise? And why feel any guilt at all? Jane never quite met the ideals of Progressive Rock (transcendence, virtuosity, so forth), but as a boilerplate hard-rocking ensemble with higher-than-average aspirations they were close to peerless in their mid-'70s heyday. And Progheads know better than anyone how to live with a guilty pleasure: by ditching the pointless guilt and unearthing the buried pleasure.