Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Schon, Neal
Label: Frontiers Records
Released: 2012
Length: 55:31
Rating: 4/5
»The Calling« is Neal Schon’s sixth solo studio album. He’s the only original founding member still standing in today’s Journey lineup, the AOR heavyweights he’s cut a total of 14 studio albums with so far. The man took his first professional steps in the early seventies with the shaman Carlos Santana, signing on for the cult studio records »Santana III.« and »Caravanserai«, and the last two Journey albums already hinted that he was itching to put out a solo record again. If you rack your memory just a little, both »Revelation« (2008) and the one after it, »Eclipse« (2011), show which way the wind is blowing with their closing tracks, two full-on instrumentals where Neal Schon’s guitar takes over the job of the vocalist.
Neal Schon is among the most accomplished masters of guitar playing that the rock universe of our solar system, maybe even our galaxy, has produced in its lifetime. He belongs to that tiny handful of universal guitar geniuses who have taken their playing to such perfection that they can play absolutely anything they touch convincingly(!) and with swagger(!). He’s one of those musicians who slips into all sorts of musical storylines with feather-light ease, which is why Schon has always been in high demand and highly prized as a session player for plenty of prominent names.. To list just a few of the people who have called on his studio chops: Joe Cocker, Sammy Hagar, Paul Rodgers, Larry Graham, Betty Davis, Michael Bolton, Jan Hammer, and that list is nowhere near complete. And then there are the bands Bad English and Hardline.
After Journey’s packed touring schedule, Neal Schon finally found some time to pull together all the musical ideas he couldn’t use with Journey into a bundle of vividly varied and wickedly witty guitar »comedies«. For this undertaking, Neal rounded up a small but proven crew of masters of their trade! For drums he enlisted none other than his colleague Steve Smith, a former Journey bandmate, Igor Len contributed keyboards, and the demanding Moog keyboard solos were laid down by Schon’s seasoned old hand Jan Hammer (Jeff Beck, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and you’ll also find him on the soundtrack to »Miami Vice«),
The opening title track The Calling is a typical wound-up rocker, built to grab your attention out of nowhere! In his guitar rhetoric and improvisations, Neal leans heavily on sound effects, working the notes through »Whammy harmonies«, something you hear very often from Joe Satriani. Right from the first track you get a clear view of the incredible reach Schon’s guitar rhetoric has in its expression. The man spaces out his notes carefully and bends a tone on the same spot of the fretboard so that he squeezes 3 – 4 different notes out of it without moving a finger (with a little help from the tremolo, too). All of this is elevated by his remarkable feel for wave-like build-ups of mood and dynamics, because some notes ring out with the finest sensitivity while others get a sharp, clipped decay, only to feast in ultrasonic solo escapades.
The guitarist’s layered craftsmanship is confirmed right after The Calling by Carnival Jazz, which is thoroughly perforated with Smith’s tom-tom rolls. This track also holds on to the optimistic spirit that carries the stamp of Neal Schon’s guitar playing, a familiar constant of how he’s folded his guitar into the Journey vocabulary as well. Carnival Jazz really doesn’t let up, seems unpredictable even in its basic arrangement, and is the most complex and progressive track on the album! Around the halfway mark it breaks into a full-blown experimental jazz rock fusion adventure, where Schon firing off rapid bursts never runs out of ammo. In the closing stretch Smith and Schon make room for the keyboards, whose classic piano sound seasons the experimental solo bloom of the track in jazzy colors all the way to the end.
The tracks Blue Rainbow Sky, Six String Waltz and/or True Emotions are slowed-down but emotionally high-vibe moments of the album that would fit perfectly as the closer of any recent Journey album, which means they combine exceptional accessibility with bringing Neal Schon’s guitar character to the listener in the most classic way. The almost standard »Journey-esque« one.
The short prelude to Back Smash, called Irish Field, sums up the guitarist’s tenderness, which comes close to Steve Morse’s (Deep Purple) in his Contact Lost, and Gary Moore fans will feel at home near it too. It was only a matter of time before a track like Fifty Six showed up on the tracklist of »The Calling«. It’s a fusion of oriental melos, with percussion creating rhythm patterns in the style of true »arabesques«, and Schon soon lifts the track into a rally stampede of his own guitar playing, weighed down fusion-style with jazz piano improvisations. One of the wildest musical adventures on the new album.
Probably the wittiest moment of the album is the playful and amusingly sly Tumbleweeds, where Schon again uses »Whammy« harmonies cleverly in the lead motif, so the track will once more be close to the hearts of Joe Satriani fans. Primal Surge carries some connotations of the tribal rhythms of the Black continent, thanks to Steve Smith’s powerful involvement and the cerebrally provocative sentiment of long, bent notes held with a venomous »sustain« effect, forming a dreamy yet infectious lead melody from Neal Schon’s magic hands.
Schon pulls off an excellent, expressively teasing throw just before the end of the album in the bluesy-rock, erogenous provocativeness of Transonic Funk, which is based on a tightly belted, mid-tempo groove that’s all the more flirtatious for it, while the guitar is wonderfully wrapped in a curtain of »Hammond like« keyboard sound. Schon finds his way around the blues sphere like a master, clearly showing where the great maestro comes from and where the root of his guitar playing lies. The high-voltage, die-hard rock album of Schon’s guitar playing closes with the calm, acoustic Song Of The Wind II, whose quiet, whispering melodicism is a great relief from the rock intensity that otherwise rips relentlessly through the album!
An excellent studio album from Neal Schon and a lovely »filler« for guitar rock fans while Satriani is cooking up his next studio follow-up. In short! A typical guitar rock album, cut in harmony with Schon’s unique, instantly recognizable multifaceted trademarks, bringing to market a product of musical substance with full-blooded, tangible content. »The Calling« is the album Neal Schon simply needed in 2012 to fully let loose and challenge his artistic self. The established and well-affirmed musical form of Journey is definitely not enough to expose all the ingenuity and vividness of the uniquely polished diamond that is the playing of this guitar spaceman and great sage of his craft. Album »The Calling« fixes all of that!
Lineup
Neal Schon – guitar, bass guitar
Igor Len – keyboards
Steve Smith – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Jan Hammer – “Moog” keyboards
Production
Neal Schon
Tracklist
1. The Calling
2. Carnival Jazz
3. Six String Waltz
4. Irish Field
5. Back Smash
6. Fifty Six (56)
7. True Emotion
8. Tumbleweeds
9. Primal Surge
10. Blue Rainbow Sky
11. Transonic Funk
12. Song Of The Wind II.
