2018 CD Reviews - Steve Perry - Traces

Steve Perry

Traces

Fantasy Records -2018

http://www.steveperry.com

From the mid-to late '70's until the mid '90's, you would be hard pressed to find many people who wouldn't recognize that Steve Perry was one of the finest AOR singers in the business. From Journey to his two solo albums, Perry was one of those singers who could legitimately be thought of as a "voice of a generation".

And then, suddenly he was gone. Reportedly, despite making a few rare public appearances, his love of music just left him.

For more than 20 years, there was nothing to be heard from him. That is until the announcement of the pending release of this album. There was a lot of anticipation to hear new music that he had composed. And when the song "No Erasin'" was released in advance of the full Traces album, there was rejoicing across the land. Except from me that is.

I made the conscious decision to avoid hearing any of the music from the album until I actually had the album in my hands. Of course, the best laid plans ended up becoming me having the album but never quite getting around to listening to it until now.

I know there has been a ton of positive press and reviews about the album so for those who loved Traces, you might want to stop reading now. Because I really found this CD to be a relatively painful slog of a listen.

I have to listen to an easy listening type station at work when others are there and even that type of radio station wouldn't play the majority of the songs on this album. It's so laid back and polished to with an inch of its life that there's not even a hint of an edge on most songs. I know that a lot of people will think I'm committing musical blasphemy but most of this album is BORING!

It starts off okay with "No Erasin'", a solidly uptempo track that lets you hear Perry's vocals as they are now. It still sounds like him of course, but you can definitely tell there is a two decade difference in his vocal sound.

While the musical soundtrack to the disc is appropriately lush given all the orchestration on the various tracks, I found that songs like "We're Still Here" and "Most Of All" were pretty sedate and kind of sleepy in their delivery.

I did think that "No More Cryin'" was a bit more involving though. The chorus really gave the song a boost too.

But with the exception of one other song, the rest of the material reduced my interest to the point of apathy. I wasn't expecting Perry to rock out like it was the mid-80's but I was hoping for a bit more than one flat sounding piece of balladry after another.

Speaking of rocking out, that one other song I mentioned was "Sun Shines Gray". Co-written by John 5 (strangely credited as John Five in the liner notes). The song also features him on guitar and with Josh Freese (from too many rock bands to mention) on drums, this is a song that is bursting with a huge rock energy. I loved this song a whole lot and it made me long for at least a couple more tunes of this nature.

The version of the album I got contained ten tracks, but there is a exclusive edition available from Target stores with 5 additional songs on it. I don't know what those sound like but I know that the basic version of this album could've used an extra helping of rock and roll to help even out all these damn ballads that made Traces an overall disappointment for me.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by RJhog (Admin) on December 30, 2018 at 3:24pm

Don't think you would have felt any different about the bonus tracks.

That being said, I loved it. It is what it is. He is wearing his emotions on his sleeve and in his music. Don't get me wrong, I found the last album he made with Journey a complete bore, much like you did this one. But I knew what was coming going in, and I'm not at all disappointed. As they always say, to each his own. And I for one am cool with that.