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Renaissance Review
03/31/2005 3:31 AM, AMG
The first Renaissance album features what, today, would be considered almost a legendary lineup at its core. At the time of the Yardbirds' split in mid-'68, Jimmy Page walked away with the blues and hard rock side of the band, plus whatever heavy metal influences they'd ever manifested, while lead singer Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty -- who'd represented the more folk-oriented creative side of the old band in earlier years, and their trippier, spacier side in more recent times -- decided to get experimental in those directions, initially under the name Together as a duo, and then forming an entire new group. Ex-Herd/Jimmy Powell & the Dimensions alumnus Louis Cennamo joined on bass and John Hawken, late of the Nashville Teens, came in on piano, with Relf picking up the guitar as well as singing, and his younger sister Jane Relf sharing the vocals. The resulting group, working from Relf and McCarty's compositions, proved greater than the seeming sum of its parts as Hawken and Cennamo quickly began expanding on the basic songs, developing their own classical-style cadenzas -- at the time, in 1969, there was just enough adventurousness left from the psychedelic era to hold that audience to what they were doing, even as a new art rock audience began coalescing. The resulting album is a strange mix of psychedelic, classical, folk, and jazz elements -- "Kings and Queens" had elements of freakbeat and art rock, steeped in a musical romanticism (complete with a rippling Hawken piano solo, and some of McCarty's best drumming ever, as well) in between a pounding opening and closing section. In contrast to a lot of the art rock groups that followed, however, the music here is still very much the work of a rock band -- there's a lean texture to the playing that tells you this was a performing ensemble that was used to working clubs, Relf turning up his amp on occasion to get a nice crunchy sound on his guitar and lending his instrument to the classical-style cadenzas on pieces such as "Innocence"; Jane Relf's crystal pure, soaring alto added a hauntingly beautiful element that was unusual in rock at the time. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
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