Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: May 22, 2020
Production: Dennis DeYoung
Album length: 43.30 min
Genre: AOR
Rating: 10/10
Dennis DeYoung is to Styx what salt is to soup. His third and final farewell from Styx, after the album “Brave New World” (1999), left a bitter aftertaste. He didn’t part ways with his former bandmates peacefully, and the split was followed by a courtroom epilogue, where the fight over the rights to the Styx name played out. Well, ever since Dennis left Styx, the band has been putting out solid albums, but you keep wondering again and again how it would all sound if he were still in Styx. Quite likely there’d be more post-millennium Styx albums, and they’d be even better. Plain and simple. Besides being an exceptional vocalist and keyboardist, DeYoung was always seen as the band’s core composer. That’s why many of its followers today find it very hard to agree on whether Styx without DeYoung are really the real Styx, because they just can’t conjure that magic back without him, even if the albums without him are more than solid. Just three of them so far. And this October, a fourth one is (finally) on the way. Anyway. It’s nice to know that DeYoung, ten years after his fifth studio album “One Hundred Years From Now On”, decided to release a follow-up. That’s “26 East: Volume 1”, which, as the title hints, also announces that another studio album will follow. Let’s not forget, DeYoung is 73 today. So at least one more.
Let me say right off the bat: DeYoung sings brilliantly for his age. His voice hasn’t lost a speck of the sheen that defines the classic Styx albums and DeYoung’s solo studio work. The new album brings a series of wildly varied tracks, filigree-detailed in their composition and arrangements. DeYoung thought of everything. He also sequenced them with real skill, which reinforces the album’s highly dynamic flow, crowned just before the end by a “Beatlesque” number called To The Good Old Days, in which Lennon’s son Julian joins Dennis for a superb duet. Since this is a solo studio album, the message naturally leans personal and confessional, and DeYoung is once again (almost proverbially) heartfelt, immersed and passionate in everything his vocal aura, or rather his incredibly distinctive vocal charisma, tackles. Going through this album for the first time, you’re reminded of a similar move by Journey’s original voice, Steve Perry, who put out his new studio album two years ago. The gap since his predecessor was twice as long, but still. There’s no shortage of perfection, so it was easy to call it one of the best achievements in AOR for 2018. This year, we can safely say the same right now about DeYoung’s new album “26 East: Volume 1”.
When the album opens with the bombastic, hard-grabbing AOR of East of Midnight, every fan of the man and the golden days of Styx will know they’ve “come home.” Probably you’re already itching for something more tangible to pin this Styx kinship on? The album “Paradise Theater” (1981)! It’s right there from the opener East of Midnight, and such associations pop up a few more times later in the album (Unbroken creates a similar feeling), with the closing track A.D. 2020 even ending on the line “Welcome to Paradise”.
The album’s drama-theater side is turned all the way up! It’s packed with bombastic chorus hooks. One of them is the phenomenal, mystical and dark A Kingdom Ablaze, the drama of all dramas on this record. After the irritated yet cheeky With All Due Respect, which would almost make DeYoung’s album need a “Parental Advisory” sticker, A Kingodm Ablaze flips the mood and masterfully prepares the runway for You My Love, a fantastic chansonnier ballad that would have easily shaken up the top of the radio charts in the mid-eighties, and that sounds as if Styx had simply forgotten to write it back then.
DeYoung gathered an excellent crew of musicians around him, so the guarantee of success couldn’t fail to show up. Have Jim Peterik at your side and it’s all clear. DeYoung admitted in an interview that he’d never have tackled the album if Jim Peterik hadn’t egged him on. Peterik is considered one of the best composers in AOR who ever walked this planet, and whatever comes out of his creative mind is, as a rule, always a “gold mine” or a “bullseye.” From head to toe, the album is arranged to the max and knows no artistic slip-ups. Take, for example, one AOR gem: Damn That Dream, whose chorus easily gives you goosebumps. The chorus of one of the album’s strongest tracks, The Promise of this Land, has a gospel-preacher feel to it. The way it craftily combines the lead vocal lines with extra backing harmonies is the kind of arrangement that someone like Jeff Lynne (E.L.O.) would snatch up in an instant.
“26 East: Volume 1” is a revelation for fans of classic Styx, and it adds yet another phenomenal solo studio album to DeYoung’s collection of auteur perfectionism. It’s bursting with drama-theater flair and pompous melodies, brilliant compositional ideas and solutions, and superb production that also nails just the right level of organic feel. As such, it already belongs on the shortlist for best AOR album of the year!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. East Of Midnight
02. With All Due Respect
03. A Kingdom Ablaze
04. You My Love
05. Run For The Roses
06. Damn That Dream
07. Unbroken
08. The Promise Of This Land
09. To The Good Old Days
10. A.D. 2020
Line-up:
Dennis DeYoung – keyboards, vocals
Jim Peterik – guitar, bass, keyboards, backing vocals
August Zadra – guitar, backing vocals
Jimmy Leahey – guitar
Craig Carter – bass, backing vocals
Mighty Mike Morales – drums
John Blasucci – keyboards
Mike Aquino – guitar
Kevin Chalfant – backing vocals
Matthew DeYoung – drums on “To The Good Old Days”
Ed Breckenfeld – drums on “Unbroken”
The Chicago Children’s Choir conducted by Josephine Lee
