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shimmied onto this year's rock-reunion conga line. And on Trial By Fire,
their first album in a decade, they've bested all their competition. Rarely have a re-formed
rock band whipped up new material and then gone to such jaw-dropping lengths to make it sound
exactly the way it would have during their commercial peak (circa 1983). Steve Perry's voice
is as smarmily supple as ever, and guitarist Neal Schon cranks out the same steely solos. The
songs still seesaw between ladies-night ballads and inflated rockers with love-struck-adolescent
lyrics. (The band treat power ballads as a timeless form, like sea shanteys
Come on, admit it: Your pop guilty pleasures
include at least one song by Journey. During the early 80s, the band may have epitomized
General Motors assembly-line rock. But in their own mechanical way, the group provided a
service, a refuge for those wary of the cool detachment of new wave. Journey's keep-on-believing
anthems spoke to more people than any ironic David Byrne lyric did; call them the Tony Robbins of rock.
Now that their various side projects haven't panned out, Journey have,
not surprisingly,
or blues shuffles.) Not that we
should expect hip-hop beats or garbled grunge lyrics, but even the songs sound familiar: Isn't the
admittedly hooky single
Message of Love just
Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) sideways?
Trial By Fire won't change the mind of anyone who thought Journey a polished but hollow hit
machine. But it still has social function: When You Love A Woman will make a perfect wedding
song for old fans preparing to march down the aisle.
