ASHES ARE BURNING

You'd have to be pretty hard of heart not to appreciate some of Renaissance's music, since it's just so damn pretty...occasionally even beautiful. This album, possibly their career highlight, is chock full of wonderful melodies sung in Annie Haslam's nightingale-sweet, soaring voice. This is not as classical music-influenced as other albums, with lots of folk-rock the order of the day. The shorter songs particularly are as good as hippie folk-rock gets, with great, uplifting melodies, if you can get past some Sesame Street-cute optimistic lyrics (which I can). The album's highlight is At the Harbour, an incredible acoustic song that starts with solo piano and changes into a tragic ballad of the sea featuring delicate broken chords on the guitar. Quite breathtaking. The bookends of the album, Can You Understand and Ashes Are Burning, are more typical Renaissance epics, and driven by John Tout's dramatic classical piano and harpsichord. The album concludes with an emotional Andy Powell guitar solo on the dramatic title track. This is one of three Renaissance (in the post-Relf lineup, at least) records that all symphos should own, along with Turn of the Cards and Scheherezade. Also don't miss the first Illusion album, which is just as good.