RENAISSANCE
Renaissance/Azure d’Or REPERTOIRE/CHERRY RED
Two releases from two incarnations of the adventurous outfit.
While there are plenty of big-name bands around that still fight the good fight with no founding members left on board, it’s rare to find one who changed 100 per cent of their line-up within two years of forming – let alone one who then went on to find great success in their subsequent incarnation.
But Renaissance managed it, with the result that their newly reissued, self-titled debut album, originally released in
THE SAME IN NAME ONLY, BUT BOTH WORTHY OF INVESTIGATION.
1969, and the also repackaged Azure d’Or made in 1979 at the peak of their commercial success, are essentially the work of two different bands. The music within, however, does have some key qualities in common.
Keith Relf and Jim McCarty, formerly half of The Yardbirds, formed Renaissance in 1969 with Relf’s teenage sister Jane on vocals, and the penchant for folk and psychedelia that had set them at odds with Jimmy Page’s vision for their former band can be heard on the first of the two albums they would end up making. There are plenty of adventurous elements to be heard on Renaissance, from the intoxicating faux-classical flourishes within the quick-quick-slow ride of Innocence to the baroque pop of Kings And Queens. Jane Relf’s voice on single Island and bonus track The Sea suggests she would have done a fine job of fronting the band in later incarnations, but as it was, first Keith Relf, McCarty and bassist Louis Cennamo quit, then, soon after she and piano player John Hawken formed Mk II of the band, they also took their leave.
Renaissance would reinvent themselves, most famously with the charismatic vocals of Annie Haslam up front, and while John Hawken’s piano lines were noticeably prominent on their debut, 10 years on, John Tout in the same role can still be heard providing the sound with an identifying trait.
In 1978, having been regarded as fellow travellers on the prog scene for several years, they found themselves on Top Of The Pops when Northern Lights, from that year’s A Song For All Seasons, was a Top 10 hit single. Azure d’Or was released the following year, and sounds like the work of a band more confident than ever in their ability to weave folk textures with unorthodox flourishes and rich harmony-woven hooks.
Highlights on the reissue, as well as agreeably knotty poprock compositions such as Jekyll And Hyde, include an extended version of Friends which doubles its length and intensifies its joyous, encore-worthy feel, and the breezy Island Of Avalon, a medieval-flavoured folk jaunt originally intended for the album but eventually relegated to a B-side. The same band in name only, then, but just as worthy of investigation decades later.