Blackmore's Night continue to conjure up the Renaissance

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

Blackmore's Night: Nature's Light
(Image: © EarMusic)

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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

Neil Jeffries

Freelance contributor to Classic Rock and several of its offshoots since 2006. In the 1980s he began a 15-year spell working for Kerrang! intially as a cub reviewer and later as Geoff Barton’s deputy and then pouring precious metal into test tubes as editor of its Special Projects division. Has spent quality time with Robert Plant, Keith Richards, Ritchie Blackmore, Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore – and also spent time in a maximum security prison alongside Love/Hate. Loves Rush, Aerosmith and beer. Will work for food.