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Blackmore’s Night continue to conjure up the Renaissance

Blackmore’s Night deliver more 16th-century musings on Nature’s Light, album number 11

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Anyone expecting Ritchie Blackmore’s return to hard rock with a fully electric Rainbow (2016-18) to have curbed his Renaissance troubadour inclinations take note: it didn’t.

Though for any who remember those old instrumental Rainbow B-sides there are hints of a past abandoned… The Hammond organ-laced trio of Darker Shade Of Black (a slow-paced masterpiece sounding like Procol Harum covering Fools Rush In), slow blues shuffle Der Letzte Musketier and closing number Second Element (with a melody approaching latter-day Fleetwood Mac) all feature swaggering Stratocaster workouts. 

But it’s clear that in 2021 Blackmore is a guitar hero content to deliver little more than efficient folky picking (Once Upon December, Four Winds et al) while others add jollity with a penny whistle (Going To The Faire) or rousing brass (Nature’s Light). 

Which means the fabulously-voiced Candice Night is the true star here, never better than throughout the sublime Blackmore’s Night original Wish You Were Here

Source: loudersound.com