There are a lot of forms of music from 50 years ago that are still doing just fine today. Progressive rock isn’t one of them. Common wisdom would say that punk rock did it in towards the end of the 70s, when it was no longer cool to listen to songs that took up an entire album side, and rock music was getting back to its roots. Others just decided that the excessive amount of mindless noodling that often filled meandering and ponderous compositions wasn’t where they wanted to be. And as FM radio got more and more commercial, there wasn’t any place on the dial to hear songs that went 10 minutes or longer. (Now we have TikTok, so you can see how our attention span has shortened over the decades).
Bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and many others were at the top of the progressive heap, and rightly so — the music often reached levels of orchestral intricacy, expressing desperate musical influences and textures, weaving them all together to take the listener on a genuine musical journey. Sure, they were great musicians, but they were also storytellers of epic proportion.
I’m guessing most everyone has heard of the bands I mentioned, but do you know who Renaissance is? Probably not. They never really charted here in the states, and while they had a few songs crack the top 10 in their homeland of the UK, they never really got to be the household names other groups had. (Although “Ashes Are Burning” did make it to 171 on the Billboard top 200 LP list in 1973). And, it’s a pity — because of all of them, I think Renaissance was one of the best. Rather than being weighty and heavy, their music often had an open, airy, and genuinely optimistic approach to compositions and lyrics. The other thing that set them apart was their lead singer, Annie Haslam. Annie had one of those voices that was so pure and strong, it brought a light to everything the band did. I think the best analogy I can give you is imagine if Judy Collins sang with Emerson Lake & Palmer, and you kind of get in the ballpark of what Renaissance was at the height of their progressive period. (Later in the 80s like many bands, they would pretty much abandon the prog rock style and opt for well produced four-minute pop/rock songs, but that was a decade off from “Ashes Are Burning.")
This was the fourth studio album from Renaissance, and one where they purposely chose to move in a more folk influenced style to try to differentiate themselves from the myriad other prog rock groups on the scene at the time. The band was also between guitar players at the time, so the use of piano and keyboards is significantly more prominent then on previous releases. This is also the first of a number of Renaissance records that would feature orchestration on some of the tracks.
While there is great cohesion with all six tracks on this release, there is enough variation to keep one interested all the way through to the title track, which closes out the set clocking in at 11 minutes (but it really doesn’t feel that long, which is a testament to how well the song is built). And not all of the songs are huge productions, some are three and four minutes, folk flavored with Annie’s lovely voice soaring over well-balanced and intricate melodies.
“The Renaissance” can be defined as a period marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Considering this, the band Renaissance is perfectly named — they provide a bridge from long held progressive rock troupes to a more modern and accessible expression of musical ideas you can still hear in pop songs today. Give “Ashes Are Burning” a listen and see if you can hear the transition for yourself.
While not a masterpiece in the grand scheme of things “Ashes Are Burning” holds up well 50 years on, and if you have never heard Annie Haslam sing, you owe it to yourself to give these songs a listen.
