Journey - Dream, After Dream (CBS/Sony import)
Captured, is not the new Journey album, even though that live double LP came out
only recently. In Japan Journey have released a record of genuinely new music that's a lot
more interesting than the one they've got out in the U.S. Dream, After Dream, a movie
soundtrack album, gives the band a chance to try out a few new ideas without the commercial
pressures that would accompany such a project here.
Destiny begins side one like the break of day, with a pastoral picture painted
by a string section. Steve Perry's melodramatically-sung words tell a vague and romantic ocean tale.
(To learn more, you'll have to see the movie, apparently.) This peaceful intro gives way to a charging
rhythm passage, as Neal Schon's guitar trades blows with the strings. After a mournful orchestral
interlude that could be straight out of Dr. Zhivago, Perry returns for Sandcastles, a
dreamy episode highlighted by Takeshi Ito's poignant sax playing.
Opening side two, Moon Theme alternates floating guitars and piercing crescendoes
before fading into an angelic harp conclusion. When The Love Has Gone is Schon's big moment in
the spotlight, a tense display of searing, sustained notes over cool electric piano. After two snippets
of sound effects, vocalist Perry returns for only his third appearance on Little Girl, an overdone
ballad sure to remind some of MacArthur Park.
Dream, After Dream functions as a coherent work in a way that many rock soundtracks,
such as Queen's Flash Gordon, do not. Out of necessity, however, the disc is often fragmentary and
vague, for if Journey came on in full force they wouldn't be fulfilling their task of creating sounds to
accompany a film. This exercise in mood music clearly isn't Journey's most illustrious effort, but it may
suggest to them some different approaches that lie outside their accustomed formula, which would be all to
the good.