Moontan - GOLDEN EARRING****

Candy's Going Bad/Are You Receiving Me/Suzy Lunacy (Mental Rock)/Radar Love/Just Like Vince Taylor/The Vanilla Queen

Moontan was the only album from the progressive Dutch band Golden Earring to achieve a respectable album chart placing in the US and UK, helped by the major international hit single Radar Love. (US:12 UK:24)

“One of the great prog albums though the song that is most well known is the straight up hard rock classic Radar Love. The Vanilla Queen is a prog ballad masterpiece; Are You Receiving Me is amazing, and Candy's Gone Bad rocks. This LP is underrated and a must for fans of prog and hard rock.”

“Radar Love, good as it is, is only the beginning. Melodic, progressive heavyish rock, absolutely cooking, literally from the very first chord to the very last.”

“Moontan is the utterly fantastic Dutch progressive rock band Golden Earring's best album, by far. A lot of what makes it so awesome are the really excellent and complex as well as the insanely great bass lines. The album is full of long multi-part prog excellence.”

“A quantum shift toward commerciality, this one gave them a taste of worldwide stardom via the mega-hit. Said stardom turned out to be a drug they could easily get accustomed to, and wrote their direction change in stone. From here on in, they would steadily descend farther and farther into the commercial cesspool. But this one still retains a solid semblance of decent material, commercial, yes, but somehow uniquely different and interesting to listen to. Each track features long instrumental passages with good period flavour.”

“Solid hard proggy rock from start to finish. Their overall vibe is just so cool. Nice guitar work throughout. Toe tappers mixed with some spacey stuff make this a killer.”

“This album was chosen as the greatest rock album from the Netherlands some years ago and I can see the reason why. Moontan is Golden Earring's most successful and famous album and it's a very solid mix of catchy hard rock with very clear progressive rock elements.”

“I find it truly amazing. Radar Love is the obvious classic, but the hard-rocker Candy's Going Bad and the spacey and whimsical Vanilla Queen are great additions to the album.”