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The Evening News (New Glasgow)
Arts & Entertainment, Saturday, April 8, 2006, p. C3

Music Reviews

Blackmore's Night

The Village Lanterne

(SPV)

Rating: HHH out of five

Ritchie Blackmore's devotion to Renaissance music continues to drive the band he co-fronts with wife Candice Night. While each Blackmore's Night release feels more like a comfy old medieval shoe, the latest adds more pop - like the Abba-ish title track and the unabashed MOR ballad Call It Love - and, oddly, more metal, via remakes of Deep Purple's Child In Time and Rainbow's Street of Dreams.

Elsewhere, it's the usual blend: haunting anthems with galloping beats, gentle acoustic picking and good-company singalongs. Although it's been three years, why should any real time pass for a group that sets up a permanent tent in 1400, as filtered through 1975? And, really, would there be any point in messing with the formula?