ProgRocker53 wrote:Maui Tom wrote:ProgRocker53 wrote:Maui Tom wrote:This has the whole "car singing along to it" vibe for me...complete with some Neal air guitar action...
I don't break shit down like some of you peeps do....
some of you won't ALLOW yourselves to like it...come hell or high
water....
I like it. I may grow to like it more later.
Hell, everyone knows how much I loathe OA and LTS yet I still throw those ones on from time to time and let it rip.
"Maybe the guys' wells have finally ran dry?"
don't be a fucking hypocrite grasshopper....
Just because I feel that they are creatively backtracking doesn't mean I don't like the music. Formulaic it may be, it's still a formula that highly appeals to me. I love listening to soaring melodic guitars, incredible vocals, and catchy hooks. Maybe I've just set my expectations too high, 'tis all.
I hear considerably less backtracking on the other two songs from Vegas. Journey? yes, but maybe not the retreads of something else. For what it's worth, there really haven't been more than a few "vintage Journey" songs on any of the recent albums. Trial By Fire only had a few, then it forged its own path. Arrival was the same, Red 13 was a left turn that if tightened up with a good producer, probably would have been better received. The songs were strong and lyrically impressive, but they meandered around enough so as to not be commercial by any stretch. Generations was half an album plus leftovers, but it DID have a rawer, more rocking sound. Theoretically, any Schon ballad is going to sound different to your Open Arms/Faithfully mold. They have been known to put a few left turns in (Livin to Do, Out of Harms Way). No reason to think that the new album won't have something similar.
Journey took a long enough break that they can't really modernize the sound without it going far away from "Journey". Bon Jovi was able to modernize without losing everybody over a period of several years and albums. Journey doesn't have that option--at least not in a commercially viable sense. Keeping the first song recognizably Journey probably isn't a bad idea, but it doesn't say much about the rest of the album. Bon Jovi is famous for this. The only thing you have to worry about is Kevin Shirley producing, and his penchant for more ballads than rock songs.
My guess is that Journey is basically at the one last attempt by marking out the Augeri era, and re-introduce the band with a massive marketing push to everyone who forgot they existed since (to your average radio fan) Perry came back for basically one song, and then left. Under that line of thinking, I'm surprised they only re-did Faith in the Heartland. They are basically at the clean slate, since nobody ever heard the other songs to begin with. Why not give some of the better songs a redo?
At any rate, does anyone who was in Vegas remember anything DIFFERENT about Faith in the Heartland when they played it? With Shirley producing, it may have been tightened up a little.
In the end, it's all about the strength of the songs. Originality and movement forward comes a distant second.
hey man is this version pretty close to the writing sessions?
