The first
Jefferson Starship album since
Jefferson's Tree of Liberty, a largely obscure 2008 collection of patriotic-themed covers, and the first album the band recorded after the 2016 death of founding member
Paul Kantner,
Mother of the Sun is a bit of an odd affair. Lone surviving original member
David Freiberg received the blessing of
Kantner's family to carry on under the
Jefferson Starship banner and he's made sure to draw a few explicit connections to the band's past. First, he recruited
Grace Slick to write a few lyrics for "It's About Time," the fist-pumping socially minded rocker that serves as the first single from
Mother of the Sun, then he devoted one of the album's six songs (the seventh and concluding cut is an extended mix of the power ballad "What Are We Waiting For?") to a new version of "Embryonic Journey," the
Jorma Kaukonen solo guitar showcase from the group's days as
Jefferson Airplane. "Embryonic Journey" is out of place on a mini-album that's stuck in the 1980s, not the '60s. Whether it's a rocker or a ballad (and there are more of the latter than the former), almost everything on
Mother of the Sun is overblown in a manner that's specific to the mid-'80s, when AOR airwaves were littered with '60s veterans flexing their muscles in an attempt to sound relevant. While it's somewhat impressive that
Jefferson Starship can re-create this sound without a sweat and without irony nearly 40 years after their peak is impressive to an extent, but
Mother of the Sun feels like it was pulled from the vaults, not recorded anew, a trick that speaks to its appeal but also to its limitations. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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![Shake It Up [Expanded Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0603497862719_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Shake It Up [Expanded Edition]")
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