Illusion
Through the Fire

I am writing a follow-up to my very recent review of "Tuscany" by Renaissance to share a few more tidbits from this juicy band's history, some aspects of which I didn't consider in the aforementioned write-up to avoid going on too long. So here we are, then.

As we were saying, there were these two guys, a singer and a drummer from a seminal early London blues rock group called Yardbirds, who surprisingly left in 1968 to form a classical pop(!) group called Renaissance.

Their role in this lineup almost ended by the second work, called "Illusion." The "almost" refers to the fact that one of the songs on Renaissance's third album "Prologue" still bears the drummer's signature. But players and singers in "Prologue" are all new; fortunately, already during "Illusion," they had approached the future and definitive new composer, an acoustic guitarist named Michael Dunford, and the future and definitive lyricist, a teacher from Cornwall with a fondness for reading the good books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The modus operandi with her was that Dunford would send her demo tapes of the new songs by mail, with the vocal parts only hummed, without lyrics. Professor Betty Thatcher quickly provided feedback, sending back the lyrics by mail. How lovely!

What do the two unfortunate ex-Yardbirds (then Led Zeppelin!) and now also ex-Renaissance (then still Renaissance, but with a lot of consistent success soon grasped, and without them) do? Do they fall into depression? Do they shoot themselves? No, they try again some time later, re-founding the initial Renaissance with more or less the same musicians from the first two albums. However, the old moniker is unusable, so they opt with great imagination for... "Illusion." Further misfortune is that in the meantime, the singer passes away: Keith Relf in 1976 is electrocuted by an electric short circuit that hits the guitar he is playing in his basement.

These Illusion release two albums, one in 1977 and another the following year: commendable, almost on the same level as Renaissance II, at least. Also because the singer Jane Relf, sister of the poor Keith, has an excellent voice, not as spectacular as Annie Haslam who had taken her place in Renaissance, but definitely warmer, more welcoming, tender, empathetic. However, success doesn't come, and the lineup is forced to disband.

And here we come to this album: years pass, 2001 arrives, and the good McCarty has pieced together a few songs and tries again. To the group's name, he desperately adds the fateful Renaissance, just to hook some slightly distracted listeners. Pianist, bassist, and the faithful Jane are the usual ones. All good? No, it's not good because:

_McCarty has never been, and will never be, a valid composer, certainly not on the level of the poor Michael Dunford (who passed away in 2012), one of the architects of Renaissance chapter Two's success.

_He allows the excellent Jane Relf to be marginalized to a backup singer role, when she has a voice three thousand times better than his, sweet, passionate, and sexy, while he, already a bit old here, seems like a slightly less grainy Waylon Jennings; in short, more country than folk, and certainly zero progressive.

_The pieces: they are anonymous little songs, going nowhere. It's elegant pop of mediocre appeal and pianist John Hawken, with all his exquisite touch on the instrument, has no way or space to elevate it to the dignity of the classically-influenced ramblings of yesteryear, which would certainly have sounded out of date, nonetheless confirming a personal and historical style, a Renaissance world that, for better or worse, has the virtue of being unique and recognizable.

'These aspiring frontman drummers always cause trouble. They should stay behind to keep the time, the rhythm, the drive for the band, instead of composing uninteresting music and moving forward to sing, with modest results. Phil Collins of Genesis, the absolute epitome of this category, damn it.