Breaking Up

This is kind of painful to admit, but I’m on the verge of ending one of the relationships in my life. It was good while it lasted. It helped me see how much joy and possibility life could contain, and stayed at my side through some rough times. It showed me incredible highs and disappointing lows. It shaped my happiness over many a summer. And even though I’ve managed to stay loyal over three decades, with, at times, the kind of devotion most people would attribute to a stalker, I’m starting to question if that same commitment is deserved anymore. There have just been too many times in recent years when there has a been a flash of promise that things might, just maybe, go back to the way they were, and while they were good for awhile, that goodness never held together. There will always be memories, but I’m afraid we’ve now reached the stage where the memories are all that’s left.

I’m thinking hard about breaking up with Journey.

Not an easy decision. “Escape” was one of the first vinyl LPs I bought with my own money, even though “Who’s Cryin’ Now” never did it for me. Neal Schon was the first musician I was a fan of inside of a band I liked -- it wasn’t hard to figure out his guitar playing was what drew me to start with. When Journey went on hiatus in the late 80s, I followed Neal through solo albums and side projects, including one album that a student once described as “the kind of music they play in the background when they’re showing the weather forecast on the news.” I stayed with them through the break-up, the reunion, through the Steve Perry megalomania that saw half the band fired and replaced with touring backup musicians (yes, I mean you Randy Jackson; I don’t care how much you name-drop on American Idol, you WERE NEVER LISTED AS A FULL MEMBER OF THE BAND, SO SHUT UP ALREADY), the subsequent sound-alike lead singers after Steve Perry left for good, and the mediocre albums that resulted. The spark, the magic was gone, but I still hung onto hope that someday it would return.

Journey released a new album about a month ago, and soon it appeared on iTunes. I dismissed it at first, thinking it was going to be a rehash of the last one with the newest singer, a guy they discovered on YouTube singing in a cover band. But then I saw it actually get a review in Rolling Stone. Which was a surprise, because usually Rolling Stone, a magazine that prides itself on being far too cool for everyone except its own writing staff, would just dismiss a Journey album as another typical legacy money-grab. It didn’t get a great review - 2 stars out of 5 - but a few of the comments in the review made me curious. So I decided to give the band one more chance before we break up for good. If this album doesn’t work, we’re done. And right here, right now, you get to see this decision unfold in real time as I give the album my first listen.

The album is called “Eclipse.” It starts out promising because the cover art references “Escape” in three different ways: The one-word title starting with an “E”, the trippy way they substitute some of the letters with numbers like they did with “Escape,” and a return to the little outer-space June bug that came bursting through some kind of spherical prison on the “Escape” cover, a cover I knew well since I sketched it with some accuracy on my eighth grade social studies notebook. Also most of the songs are between five and seven minutes long, which is a plus for me.

Okay, here we go. Tuning out the world, volume slider up all the way. Please, Journey. Don’t screw this up.

City of Hope - Yeesh. Kind of a pandering title to start with. A fire alarm guitar riff in the beginning. This guy really does sound like Steve Perry... most of the time. Not bad musically, pretty good solo that wasn’t long enough. A lot of the lyrics sound like something a middle school girl would post on a friend’s wall if that friend needed extra encouragement after a bad day. A little extra guitar in the last minute, which gets ugly in a good way. Overall it’s sort of bland, but there’s promise.

Edge of the Moment - Hey, this one starts out pretty cool. Much more of a rock song from the get go, with a funky rhythm section. Almost makes me want to turn to the drum kit and play along. Two minutes in and I’ve decided I really like this one. Two shorter solos with a nice bridge in the middle. Definitely gets the job done.

Chain of Love - Opens with some spacey keyboards... hmm... let’s hope this is going somewhere soon.... Whoa. Some full-on steam-engine metal guitars as soon as the keyboard melody is resolved, but they get a little buried in the mix when the vocals start up again. Typical Neal solo... I’d rather see more fireworks from him, especially on a song like this.

Tantra - Piano with subtle strings in the background - this has token ballad written all over it. Guys, seriously, you really took this kind of song to its logical peak with “Faithfully.” You aren’t going to top that, so I don’t know if it’s worth trying. Hmm, the rhythm changes halfway through, kicks up the tempo. That’s interesting. Playing around with the time signatures a bit - I can respect that. Guitar solo is still kind of bland, though. I’ll stop commenting on that until something comes up worth a comment. It kind of plods along until the piano/string wash returns at the end, for no reason at all.

Anything is Possible - Just from the title, and the first ten words, I’m guessing this song came from leftover lyric ideas from “City of Hope.” I’m wondering if whoever Journey’s primary songwriters are now have melodramatic middle-school kids, and if they are raiding their diaries when their lyrical ideas run dry. Anything is possible? Except remembering anything about this song ten minutes after I hear it. Oohh.. nice solo at the end though. Sounds like something from Neal’s 90s band Hardline. Yeah, I know you haven’t heard of them. Just take my word on this.

Resonate - Nice title; I just like this word, so that’s a good beginning. Kind of a proggy, dramatic beginning... okay, keep this up... nice rhythm guitar going on here, good energy in the drumming. Just caught myself bobbing my head along with it. Yeah, baby. I’m diggin’ this one.

She’s a Mystery - Jangly, almost acoustic guitars - 12-string? I can never tell for sure, but that’s my guess. A nice, laid-back sun-on-your-face summer kind of song. If Joe Satriani’s “Rubina’s Blue Sky Happiness” had any lyrics, it would sound a lot like this. And then in the last two minutes huge power chords come pounding in, and it still fits everything that was happening earlier. I was liking it before, but now it’s awesome.

Human Feel - Longest song on the album -- let’s see if its merited. It starts out with drum beats accompanied by percussive guitar chords, then an old-school organ and the bass come in. It gets repetitive after awhile, and doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere new. It would have been a better song at 3:30 instead of 6:43.

My Ritual - I am stunned by the percentage of the lyrics on this album that are nothing but clichés. I’ll have to check the songwriting credits online to see if either Bryan Adams or Chris Daughtry was involved. We’ve got a faster song here, one that seems to be engineered to inspire fists pumping at the sky during a live show. It’s not bad, but it’s hardly noteworthy. I think I’d like this one more if it were only one song out of nine instead of one out of twelve, if that makes any sense.

To Whom It May Concern - Okay, if that’s what you call a song, you just aren’t trying hard enough. This is a good example of what I’m harping about with the clichés. Surprisingly enough, it’s a ballad... sure didn’t see that one coming. Ultimately its so forgettable it could have appeared on their last album, “Revelation,” or the one before it.... and I honestly can’t remember the title of that one without looking it up in the iTunes library. Oh, right. “Arrival.” Man, there’s still two more minutes of this? When a musical artist has worked their way up to a professional level, I’d think they’d want to put forth the best product they can, both to make sure they sell a lot of albums and to preserve their artistic legacy. And yet... filler like this.

Once You Let Someone - Once you let them what, exactly? This seems a little open ended, like that whole Meat Loaf “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” deal. Oh, okay. Once you let someone love you. There. Mystery solved. Two more words in the title didn’t work? Maybe they figured this song was already so generic they needed something that wasn’t blatantly trite for a title.

Venus - Shortest song on the album as the closer? Hmm. Bucks a trend, but whatever. We’ve got distortion and feedback to begin with, which eventually morphs into a riff that sounds vaguely familiar... I think this is some kind of instrumental reprise to an earlier song on the album, but I don’t remember which. Maybe it’s just a chance for Neal to shred things up a little, because he’s going to town here. The drummer is even coming to life. Not Mike Portnoy soloing or anything, but more than just keeping a beat. Then we start to fade out, but fade back in again? What’s up with that? There’s nothing going on here that needs to be revisited for another twenty-four seconds.

Perhaps the only intelligent comment David Lee Roth of Van Halen ever made was pointing out that most albums only have maybe three or four really good songs on them. If you follow music at all and really think about it, he had a point. And it holds true here.

You had a couple good moments on Eclipse, Journey. But I’m not sure it’s enough for me to see you again or buy whatever you do next.

I think it’s time we went our separate ways.