Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Anyone's Daughter
Label: SPV Records
Release date: 05.01.1980
Length: 39:13
Rating: 4/5
Anyone’s Daughter are a relatively obscure German progressive rock band who, like plenty of similar outfits from the seventies and eighties, would surely have stayed forgotten if prog enthusiasts hadn’t slowly started (re)discovering them in the new century. They set out way back in 1972 as a cover band playing the legendary Deep Purple. So it’s no surprise they took their name from the Deep Purple song »Anyone’s Daughter«, even if it’s a bit of a head-scratcher, given that it’s one of the weakest tracks by the famous British hard rockers, one that these days only Ritchie Blackmore still likes. Either way, it wasn’t the best send-off, because instability dogged them throughout their whole career, and you could say that after a strong start at the turn of the seventies and eighties, almost every Aynone’s Daughter album that followed was less interesting than the one before.
Toward the end of the seventies Anyone’s Daughter grew more and more sophisticated and eventually started playing symphonic prog rock under the heavy influence of British legends led by Genesis and Camel, with a smaller dose of their German countrymen Eloy and Novalis. Two players really shone here: keyboardist Matthias Ulmer, who mostly swore by the moog, and guitarist Uwe Karpa, who adored melancholic guitar phrases.
The surprisingly good debut »Adonis« (1979) was heavily influenced by Genesis from the »Selling England By The Pound« (1973) era and remains the peak of their career. After it, it even looked like Eloy were going to get some serious competition, but after the release of the next Anyone’s Daughter album, simply titled »Anyone’s Daughter«, the last record they can still be proud of today, things slowly started going downhill. It’s no surprise at all that the vocals of bassist/singer Harald Bareth were the weakest point of this ambitious band, which in the early stage of its career sounded more like the British prog ‘symphonists’ than like its krautrock peers. Bareth’s German accent isn’t as obvious as Frank Bornemann’s (Eloy), but it’s relatively ‘thin’, so it often gets lost in the energetic sections, and a pinch more charisma wouldn’t have hurt him either.
»Anyone’s Daughter« was an interesting piece of work that came out at a time when this kind of music was extremely unpopular, though the band members didn’t lose much sleep over it. Besides the symphonic prog influences, of which there are fewer than on the debut, you can also catch some shy touches of AOR and hard rock/metal, which makes it even more intriguing. Most of the songs are dominated by melodic arrangements and unusually refined guitar melancholy, which, through individual epic harmonies and romantic-fantasy lyrics, borrows the best from ‘both worlds’. Guitarist Karpa, who today is, alongside Ulmer, the only original member left, was surely a big fan of Andy Latimer (Camel) and his whole deal. He doesn’t seriously rival Latimer’s finesse, though he gets really close a few times.
Among the highlights of »Anyone’s Daughter« is without a doubt the opening energy catalyst »Swedish Nights«, which is a proper feast for all mini moog lovers and also the most uninhibited track on the whole album. »Thursday« features epic guitar passages, while Bareth luckily quickly drops his early, bizarre attempt to sound like a German Peter Gabriel. Another one of the better moments is the ‘Tolkienesque’ proto prog metal experiment »Moria«, which has dramatic keyboard-and-guitar harmonies, an epic chorus and cheesy fantasy lyrics. The pastoral ballad »Sundance Of The Haute Provence« doesn’t hold up quite as well over time, being a pretty obvious attempt to imitate Gabriel-era Genesis, while the slightly boring ballad »Enlightement« has a very good guitar solo. »Superman« boasts a great chorus and a mighty guitar line riding over symphonic moog grandeur, so much so that it can even be declared one of the band’s few true classics, while »Another Day Like Superman« is the epic-pastoral high point of »Anyone’s Daughter«.
Some prog fans even label the first two Anyone’s Daughter albums as neo-prog, which is a pretty misguided label, considering that the scene was only just starting to take shape back then, mainly on British soil, even if some of the arrangements already faintly recall certain early efforts of well-known neo-prog bands. It’s a shame that after »Anyone’s Daughter«, when they suddenly decided to switch to German lyrics, the band began changing its style far too radically, and started sounding more and more like other krautrock outfits led by Grobschnitt. Their sonic uniqueness took the biggest hit, and by the mid-eighties, when they were sinking into a sea of mediocrity, it was already clear it was time for a ‘longer break’. Anyone’s Daughter still exist (they never officially split up), but these days their activity is very limited (in the first decade of the 21st century they released only two new studio albums of dubious quality).
Lineup
Harald Bareth – lead vocals, bass guitar
Uwe Karpa – electric and acoustic guitar
Kono Konopik – drums
Matthias Ulmer – keyboards, backing vocals
Production
Petrus Wippel
Tracklist
1. Swedish Nights (4:54)
2. Thursday (3:59)
3. Sundance Of The Haute Provence (3:39)
4. Moria (3:52)
5. Enlightment (5:01)
6. Superman (3:56)
7. Another Day Like Superman (8:03)
8. Azimuth (1:27)
9. Between The Rooms (4:22)
