Shades Of A Blue Orphanage
by Thin Lizzy

From AAL2014 05/21/2025 02:36 | #309081

Such a strange album, especially in that they had a pretty forged “Thin Lizzy sound” brewing on the first record and that’s not to be found very much in this outing.

I appreciate the mix of sounds and the attempt to stretch out a bit but the results come up short on most of these efforts. At their worst, the songs here are flaccid pastiches of landing pads Lizzy shouldn’t have been stretching to in the first place. (Edited)

My least favorite Lizzy record but certainly not a bad one. Worthy of it's once a year visit.
Best song(s): Sarah; Buffalo Gal

This differs from the first album. The debut was a mixture of good/great ideas with some mediocre/bland ones, and it resulted in a confused album with some good songs but a lot of potentially good ideas thrown into "meh" songs. Shades of a Blue Orphanage differs in that it's maybe 2 good songs with 7 other either bland, boring, and bad songs. I can't understand what Phil was going through at this point, trying to find Lizzy's true calling, but this is hardly a rock album, as most of it's tunes are slower, ballad-y type songs with a few guitar riffs thrown throughout. I'm not bashing it because it's not a rock album, because Lizzy have plenty of great songs later in their career that couldn't really be called "rock" songs - I'm simply bashing this album because it's not very good. Their weakest studio attempt in my opinion. (Edited)

This is my least favorite Thin Lizzy album. Probably not the place for most people to start. (Edited)

The Rise and Dear Demise of the Funky Nomadic Tribes and Brought Down here. Sounds a lot different from most I have heard from them.