Artist: Journey
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2011
Length: 66.24
Rating: 5/5
From a distant planet called AOR, riding a gust of fresh, intoxicating spring night air and caressed by gentle rays of moonlight, a spacecraft shaped like an Egyptian scarab touched down in a low “glissando”. The sky suddenly lit up and a fiery ecliptic dome appeared overhead. The journey of creative energy never ends. It just keeps flowing through countless forms. This is only a short stopover, the stopover of the vessel Journey. The embodiment of perfect musical symbiosis.
Does that intro seem over the top? If you know the Journey catalog and legacy inside out, then definitely not. Let’s do a quick recap. The ultimate AOR kings from San Francisco recruited the Filipino singer Arnel Pineda as their new vocalist on the spot and in 2008 released the album “Revelation”. With it, Journey made it clear that they could still write music that stands proudly next to their most famous work. What’s more, Pineda proved to be an excellent stand-in for Perry, and Journey put out an album confirming that plenty of (unspoken and unsung) exceptional, creative energy still flows through them, keeping their sound fresh and exhilarating and testifying to the full-blooded lust for life coursing through the band’s veins. “Revelation” is an excellent record, and with it Journey proved they’re still driven forward by an inexhaustible source of positive, constant change.
Three years later, “Eclipse” arrives. The cover itself and the sequence of letters in the album’s title instantly recall “Escape”, even though the two are completely different stories. With “Eclipse”, Journey went a step further in their evolution compared to “Revelation”. Yes. Even after almost four decades of existence, they’re boldly still developing.
“Eclipse” brings two important new facts. The first is that this time it’s an utterly cranked-up rock album, where over twelve tracks everything is dominated by the guitar work of the unique genius among guitar geniuses, Neal Schon. In that respect it’s the hardest Journey album of the band’s long-lived career. It must also be added that in just three years Journey once again managed to put together 12 tracks with wildly dynamic arrangements, creating intense dynamics and a constant blending of countless moods and emotional states that are truly contrasting and keep flowing into each other through those intense contrasts. At moments of the album you can’t escape an “adventive-progressive” feel, which adds a unique art rock touch to the band’s eternal AOR charm, setting the record apart from its older siblings and giving it a new qualitative stamp Journey haven’t tried before. Alongside that adventive pedigree, though, we can say that Journey haven’t sounded this convincingly rock since “Escape”. Don’t get me wrong. “Raised On Radio” is a thoroughly competent album, a superb album, but what radiates through it is Steve Perry’s then-longing to steer the band toward R&B and soul-pop cosmetics. If we leave out the somewhat unfortunate Generations, both “Trial By Fire” and “Arrival” left the impression of albums dominated by ballads. With “Eclipse,” though, Journey finally make fans of their harder musical side happy and, after two decades, put a real rocker’s grin back on their faces.
The second novelty, which brings a step of positive change forward for the new Journey, is the shining contribution of the wonder boy Arnel Pineda, who sings the material on the new album absolutely fantastically. You’re probably already wrinkling your brows cynically when I say that, sure, at moments Pineda sounds like a Perry clone, but for most of his singing this time Pineda leaves a clear personal stamp on the vocal approach. The guy has completely relaxed and been given the green light to enrich the songs with his own vocal charisma. And Pineda sounds simply perfect. His own man, fully compatible with the band’s standard expression, yet it’s clear throughout that from here on Steve Perry is truly the band’s past. Pineda has pressed the stamp of his vocal personality here so convincingly that with “Eclipse” every comparison with the band’s former singers becomes moot.
The new album also sounds livelier than its predecessor Revelation. It has a spirited character that breathes with full lungs, filling out a spectral sonic picture. Schon is cranked up in the guitar phrases and clearly pushed to the front. Often Schon contrastingly doubles his guitar work, adding extra guitar ornaments next to the lead phrase that thicken the wall of sound behind the accompaniment. A typical example is Edge Of The Moment, one of the standout tracks on the album, where a lively wah-wah joins the guitar phrase in the chorus. It comes from the left monitor and it feels like there are two guitarists playing on the album.
The keyboards are sunk into the background this time, a little tucked away in the mix, and Jonathan Cain often uses an organ sound, subtly blended into the crushing wall that, as already mentioned, is built first and foremost by Schon’s dynamic riffing (City Of Hope, Edge Of The Moment).
The third track on an AOR album is usually reserved for a ballad, but you’re wrong this time. Even the “dubious” title Chain Of Love doesn’t qualify. We mentioned the album’s proggy touch earlier. In this track it comes to the surface more clearly for the first time. The riff is oriental, the song has a dark, dramatic flavor in the verse, and the light shines through exactly where it should. In the obligatory, melodically infectious AOR chorus. Chain Of Love is actually the first track where the mix doesn’t hide Jonathan Cain’s synths and piano, even though the keyboards stay in a supporting position.
And the fourth track, Tantra, which finally opens up on the “missed” Faithfully-type piano, fools the listener as it unfolds. It’s a calmer song, yet not a typical Journey ballad, since it flows from Pineda’s sensual opening chanson-like singing into a stately, rock-flavored sentimental vibrating. It’s precisely in this calm opening section of Tantra that the red thread of the new record’s message is clearly recognizable, its content bound together by a fragile concept. This time the concept is held up by faith in love and hope. And Journey couldn’t have found a better starting point. They’re known as a band that generates a huge amount of positive energy, filling you with joy and good feelings. And “Eclipse” is no different in that.
Jonathan Cain’s lines, such as “Across the universe, with the same force that drives the Earth, in my heart” (meant in the context of the planet’s travel along the ecliptic), and then “I am the love I choose to love”,… a blend of emotional and spiritual intelligence and extraordinary musical, artistic sophistication, embodied by the song Tantra, is the basic cue of a message we can extrapolate to the whole album. I trust you can still follow me here, because I trust you haven’t yet become emotionally numb robots enslaved to tangible empiricism, blindly following only the apostles of natural science and mathematics, or have you? The lyrics in the messages blur the line between the rational (conscious, empirical) and a state of disconnected thought. If you tie the music of “Eclipse” to that, the contact with eternity and permanence gets that much closer and the album’s vibration can touch you to the very core. But let’s stay grounded. So let’s take only the best from both principles. Extremes aren’t welcome, and the album “Eclispe” is also a remarkable balancing of both approaches of humanity’s two basic philosophies. I haven’t written anything like this since my reviews of classic Yes albums (“Fragile”, “Close to the Edge”, “Tales From Topographic Oceans”), and yet these feelings and clear messages shouldn’t be overlooked.
Tribal rhythms and a red-hot guitar riff in the “funked-up” track Human Feel, with one of the most beautiful and expressively strongest choruses of perfect melodic polish on the album, or the natural, gradual teasing with organic sonic collages of Schon’s playful acoustic work in She’s A Mistery (with an ethereal instrumental middle section), which at the start almost smells of “Going to California Zeppelin-style retro” and in fact, as its running time unfolds, delivers one of the most colorful tracks when it comes to motif shifts, and in which you can feel that Journey could easily have exploded progressively if they’d wanted to jump out of their basic, settled musical form (She’s A Mistery is, in its closing, already downright devastatingly sharpened into a metallized riff). You choose this time. The contrast is remarkable within these two songs alone, let alone when we set off on a journey through the entire album!
The songs never stop delighting with their arrangements. They combine the principle of polished melodic compactness, which is the standard of musical brilliance expected from Journey anyway, with a boldly mixed-in touch of artistry more than ever that sparkles at points of unexpected developments through the stringing together of basic motifs and excellent, disconnected getaways of Neal Schon’s elusive guitar escapades in the middle instrumental sections and/or the outros of the songs. Schon fascinates with “slalom driving” between bursts of extremely fast “trills”, unexpectedly followed by a “stretched” note, of the kind Schon popularly “bends” across the available range of tonality, with a practiced “sustain” effect of catchy magnetism. This time Schon attacks with the full guitar artillery and comes across as unbridled, passionate, at moments downright bestially fierce, and then in the very next moment the seasoned musical master shocks and enchants with sophistication and cunning (Venus, She’s A Mistery)!
The songs Edge Of The Moment and Resonate carry a similar vibe. They’re mid-tempo, underpinned by the thick undulation of Ross Valory’s “grooved” bass line, while Schon combines full riffing in both with single-string chord picking (merging several lines into the wall of sound behind the accompaniment). Both songs boast outstanding chorus rhetoric in terms of the brilliance of polished melodic refinement and compactness, which lodges in your ear from the first listen! They stand out on the album after that, and the third one of that kind is the already mentioned Human Feel.
The album calms down only with the stately To Whom It May Concern, a hard-hitting ballad into which Journey worked, right at the start, even percussion reminiscent of castanets. In this song the keyboards come to the fore again, working as orchestral arrangements in the chorus. After an exceptional, tremendously demanding vocal performance by Arnel Pineda, this very ballad-leaning track is the most direct proof that Steve Perry has thus become the past for Journey for good, someone they can only be tied to by fond memories.
The song Anything Is Possible keeps the most in common with the previous album “Revelation” in terms of sound production, and the keyboards also carry a more important function here in building the arrangements. Ritual is the type of song led in a manner akin to the opener of “Revelation”, Never Walk Away. A sort of extrapolation of the classic Journey song Be Good To Yourself for the new millennium. Ritual is an excellent single candidate, with an essence similar to the final impact of the album opener City Of Hope. Someone also brings a more indirect link to the previous Journey album, while the cathartic instrumental Venus is another move reminiscent of the previous album, since “Revelation” also closes with an instrumental. Venus is the takeoff of the intergalactic “beetle-like” vessel toward new adventures. It features the superb contrast of Schon’s improvisational brilliance and the inexhaustible rhythm-breaking of Deen Castronovo, which brings a fully progressive track to the album.
Eclispe is a new milestone in Journey’s development. With it, Journey stepped into greater arranging looseness, despite the clearly emphasized rhetoric of melodic AOR brilliance. In production terms it’s the liveliest album of Journey’s career and at the same time the hardest, a truly rocker-cranked-up record. Arnel Pineda’s one-of-a-kind performance is the tipping point of the scale, brilliantly bridging every doubt of idle thoughts that nervously call for Steve Perry’s return to the lineup. With “Eclipse”, Perry has become Journey’s past. The new album is a document of the exceptional creative skills of seasoned musicians, who with “Ecipse” remain firmly grounded in the environment they know best and where they feel most at home. At the same time it brings a developmental step forward in the band’s unique honing of its musical artistry, a band that knows no rest. “Eclipse” is a magical album. It grows slowly. It demands multiple listens. It contains strong messages that will reward you richly and for a long time. The slightly loosened arrangements bring a feeling of greater complexity than we’re used to from Journey and than could have been expected, while the peaks of the album are still the catchy, hair-splittingly polished melodic choruses of the most authentic character of the AOR Bible. This is an album that’s a lesson for all of us. An album that will stand the test of time and an album that proves how long and thorny the road is to preserving your own integrity. They don’t lack courage. The venerable sages from San Francisco don’t grow up! They don’t give in, and they’ll surely keep spoiling us richly in the future. “Eclipse” is definitely one of the best albums rock music gave us in 2011! Be assured.
Lineup
Arnel Pineda – vocals
Neal Schon – guitar
Jonathan Cain – keyboards
Ross Valory – bass
Deen Castronovo – drums
Production
Kevin Shirley, Neal Schon & Jonathan Cain
Tracklist
1. City of Hope
2. Edge of the Moment
3. Chain of Love
4. Tantra
5. Anything is Possible
6. Resonate
7. She’s A Mystery
8. Human Feel
9. Ritual
10. To Whom It May Concern
11. Someone
12. Venus
