Band:	Tarja
Album:	Colours In The Dark
Style:	Symphonic metal
Release date:	August 30, 2013
A review by:	R Lewis

01. Victim Of Ritual
02. 500 Letters
03. Lucid Dreamer
04. Never Enough
05. Mystique Voyage
06. Darkness [Peter Gabriel cover]
07. Deliverance
08. Neverlight
09. Until Silence
10. Medusa [f: Justin Furstenfeld]
11. Into The Sun [Japanese bonus]
12. Neverlight [live] [full orchestral version] [iTunes edition bonus]
13. Until Silence [orchestral version] [iTunes edition bonus]

How weird. Googling in "rich Finnish wine", the results are mainly concerning Vodka. I'm absolutely sure that there should be "Tarja Turunen" as the first link: the years pass, and that woman becomes more beautiful and interesting day by day. Colours In The Dark, in fact, follows the trend of showing her creator's talent outside of the scene that made her world famous.

Writing about Tarja, it's almost impossible to avoid the Nightwish theme and the comparison between the two sides. While the band, stuck, since Tarja' departure, in an almost Disney-esque style with a not totally appropriate singer and now in search of the right vocalist, has been making as much noise is possible around itself, Tarja, maybe with more discretion, started appreciating and learning to harness at best the new artistic paths unraveling in front of her. My Winter Storm was her first album at high levels, and this fourth effort is another step in the right direction.

The day that there will be something to complain about Tarja's vocal lines probably my beard won't anymore look like a childish fleecy fuzz, Opeth will play R&B and Morgan Freeman will return to his human form. Her voice is, like always, warm, passionate, reassuring but strong and authoritative at the same time. If I'll ever hear Mother Mary sing, I'm sure she will sound pretty much like this.

But the day when the musicianship will be criticized is, unfortunately, this. Made few welcome exceptions, the compositions of this album seem just an excuse to hear Tarja sing: it's like a meaningless mousy undergrowth around a whopping tree. This is a blemish that affected all his solo career, and this time it is only partly bevelled.

This easement of the aforementioned flaw is mainly thanks to the fact that Colours In The Dark is her most experimental record to date, being an undeniably wise mix of rock and symphonic metal. Is a dark, elegant, thoughtful album, which establishes Tarja as a classy rock queen.

The most valuable tracks, anyway, are surely the heavier ones, as the theatrical opener "Victim Of Ritual" and the crushers "Never Enough" and "Neverlight", that proudly display a really fresh and appreciable vibe. On the other hand the lighter tracks rapidly turn off the listener, often sounding artificially elaborate and sometimes even irritating in their blatant pretentiousness.

But this, maybe, was to be foreseeable: Tarja is no more and no less than a star. She's in crescendo in her solo career, and rarely fails bringing to the scene exquisite music. Altogether, Colours In The Dark is a welcome addition to every Tarja addict's collection, made of some pearls but not free of disappointments, and just good enough to fill the years until the next release. But Tarja is still far from her personal Oceanborn.