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Steve Perry sound-alike helps revitalize Journey
Published on Monday, Jun 30, 2008
REVELATION
Journey
The revelation of Journey's new album and lineup is not that this is the best Journey album in 25 years, nor that the San Francisco band found its new lead singer via YouTube.
That part, actually, is a nice story. When Journey once again needed a front man, founding guitarist Neal Schon trolled the popular video Web site YouTube and found a Filipino singer covering Journey tunes. The guy, Arnel Pineda, 40, had been homeless at 12 after his mother died and later sang for various bands in the Philippines. When Schon, struck by Pineda's tenor and charisma, contacted him last year via e-mail, Pineda thought it was a hoax.
Revelation, available exclusively at Wal-Mart and the band's Web site, features a disc of 11 new songs, plus a CD of 11 re-recorded Journey classics and a DVD of a concert shot in March at Las Vegas' Planet Hollywood. Last week, the package sold more than 100,000 copies to become Journey's first Top 5 album in 12 years.
Pineda sounds remarkably like his idol, former vocalist Steve Perry. His high tenor caresses the ballads and soars on the rockers, especially evident on the studiously
recorded covers.
Journey has had four singers in Perry's spot; technically, drummer Deen Castronovo isn't a replacement, but he handles lead vocals on Mother, Father on the concert DVD and nails that titanium Perry tenor.
Pineda's energy seems to have inspired his revitalized band mates because Revelation sounds like the true sequel to the 1983 smash Frontiers. Faith in the Heartland seems to have wandered in off of the remakes disc because it's a re-recording from Journey's 2005 CD, Generations. The new Jonathan Cain ballad, After All These Years, sounds just like the 1983 classic Faithfully. Where Did I Lose Your Love also boasts a hook and the feel of one of Journey's best rockers, Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).
But no one seeks out Journey for originality. Fans come for well-crafted, uber-mainstream arena rock, and Revelation delivers these guilty pleasures flawlessly and at a fair price, too — $11.88 for the whole package.
— Howard Cohen
Miami Herald
Alejandro Escovedo
blasts some rock
REAL ANIMAL
Alejandro Escovedo
Alejandro Escovedo can be a pensive, cryptic, death-haunted songwriter, as his recent albums attest. But every so often he prefers to blast some basic rock, and that's what he does on his ninth studio album, Real Animal.
Escovedo looks back on his punk-rocking 1970s youth, when he was a founder of a San Francisco punk band, the Nuns, and then of what was called a ''cow-punk'' band, Rank and File. This time his songwriting embraces bluntness. ''It's 1978/We know we're not in tune/We know we'll never be great,'' he sings in Nuns Song.
Escovedo, 57, isn't trying to erase the decades between his past and present. Mortality is still on his mind in songs like the harmonica-hooting People (We're Only Gonna Live So Long), which observes, ''We still got time/But never quite as much as we think.'' The album has some hard-riffing two-chord guitar stomps, but it's not wedded to a punk sound.
Real Animal was produced by Tony Visconti, who worked on David Bowie's best '70s albums, and it has tracks that knowingly look back, like the Ashes to Ashes homage in Golden Bear. Elsewhere it uses Escovedo's own preferred configuration: a rock band augmented by a string quintet.
The particulars of Escovedo's autobiography on this album — his wanderings to New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin — may not matter much to those not already following his music. But the songs also tell a larger story: of reckless youth and unrepentant maturity, of time's ravages and insights.
In Slow Down, which concludes the album, Escovedo sings, ''Want to live in this moment/But I'm tangled in the past.'' He doesn't pretend to be young on Real Animal, but he hasn't forgotten how it felt.
— Jon Pareles
New York Times
Late Dennis Wilson
shines on solo album
PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE
— LEGACY EDITION
Dennis Wilson
Out of print for almost its entire 31-year existence, the Beach Boys drummer's one-and-only solo album has achieved mythic status among rock snobs since its release in 1977. This is the rare case, though, where the art justifies the hype, and this loving reissue almost makes it seem OK that it has been unavailable all these years.
The first disc of this two-CD set presents the aching beauty of Pacific Ocean Blue in its entirety. The music owes an obvious debt to his brother Brian, but its blend of '70s rock, bluesy, soulful riffs, gospel attitude and orchestrated Southern California pop is purely its own entity.
The second disc, though not quite as good, is more of the same, presenting what would have been Wilson's follow-up effort, Bambu, had Pacific Ocean sold or Wilson been more diligent in making a go of a solo career.
Given Wilson's early death, it would be easy to romanticize these recordings. But listen to the music. The nakedly emotional content and intimate presentation rival masterworks like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. My advice: Buy it now before it disappears again.
— Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News
REVELATION
Journey
Get the full article here.
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