In May 2002, Think Tank Media re-released Lana Lane's 2nd CD, Curious Goods as the second in the 'SPECIAL EDITION' DOUBLE CD reissue series, which was originally released in 1996 in Japan only.
Just like Love Is An Illusion, all the songs have been reworked for this new issue in which Lana re-recorded ALL of her vocals on the album in early 2002.
This allowed her to reinterpret the songs with the delivery a more mature artist. Her vocal performances are hence much more reminiscent of Lana's recent albums, Project Shangri-La and Secrets of Astrology.
The whole Curious Goods record was remixed/remastered using the most state-of-the-art modern recording devices, resulting in a much more crisp and precise sound without losing any of the warmth, lushness or character of the original release.
Like is ALL Lana Lane releases, the enhanced Curious Goods contains a new bonus track, the James Bond theme "You Only Live Twice", which was recorded during the Project Shangri-La sessions with Vinny Appice, Don Schiff and Mark McCrite.
Just like its predecessor, Curious Goods features Lane's trademark soaring DIVAesque vocals combined with her love of 70's classic hard rock mixed in with some symphonic progressive ala keyboardist/hubby (Erik Norlander) along with Jazz and Big Band singers, resulted in a wonderful collection of music.
Strongly focusing on melody and harmony without sounding blatantly commercial.
Memorable songs for me are "Emerald City" and "Symphony of Angels" which to me hold that signature Lana Lane "sound". Lana also showed her love for classic rock with three cover songs, the afore mentioned "You Only Live Twice", the very well done version of Steely Dan's classic "Do It Again" and the closing track called "Clouds", which was written by David Gates from the band Bread. Lane had chosen this track for her record, which ironically (and unbeknownst to Norlander) had a very similar chord progression to "Stardust".
The usual suspects are on board again, drummer Tommy Amato (a member of Rocket Scientists, played on half of
LOVE IS AN ILLUSION and became a fan of Lane's as a result).
According to TheTank.com, Amato has played for such artists as Warrant, Savoy Brown and Doro Pesch among others, and is a highly sought - after session commodity in Los Angeles. Rocket Scientists bassist Don Schiff is also on board and in my opinion is a world class bassist/ stick player this side of Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, King Crimson) and Trey Gunn (King Crimson).
I've noticed that ALL the Lana Lane albums are anchored with conceptual instrumental pieces and Curious Goods continues this tradition of sorts with "Curious Goods Part One" and "Curious Goods Part Two". These two songs combine Erik Norlander's orchestral symphonic sound with the wordless vocal dynamics of Lane Lane.
Like with Love Is An Illusion, I listened to the original version to get a historical view of Lana's evolution of her vocal talents as well as the instrumentation of Erik Norlander, Neil Citron, Tony Franklin & Tommy Amato which can be considered by most fans as the core Lana Lane Band.
Reviewed By Ron Fuchs on January 6th, 2003
