The grand illusion --- Styx --- 1977
Unknown Soldier is always going on about how great Styx are, and to be honest I've never been able to agree or disagree, as I know very little of their output beyond the singles (which, as we all know, is quite often the worst way you can judge a band) and quite frankly have never felt the urge or need to get deeper into their discography, though I have it all somewhere here on my computer. This is their seventh album, their first real commercial success so far as I can see and the album that preceded by two the one on which they would have their biggest hit, the sugary ballad “Babe”, which took them to number one but forever after ensured they were pegged as a soft rock ballad band by anyone, including me, who did not know of the rest of their material. This is also the second album with mainstay Tommy Shaw and on it Styx continued the practice they had stared on 1976's “Crystal ball”, that of splitting the vocal duties between founder Dennis DeYoung and Shaw.
There were two hit singles from the album, “Fooling yourself (The angry young man)” and the vastly superior in my opinion “Come sail away”, and this album began a cycle of hits and platinum albums for Styx which would take them through the latter half of the seventies and into the early eighties before a hiatus of seven years between “Kilroy was here” and “Edge of the century” would mark a slow decline in popularity, at least commercially, for the band, with their last proper offering coming all the way back in 2003. They're still shown as an active band, but I think at this point, with the two main members pursuing solo careers and nothing new on the horizon, you would have to consider Styx as a band to be a dead duck.
But back in the seventies and eighties they could do no wrong, especially once this hit. I was more than a little surprised to find how proggy much of this album is (obviously I would expect it to be, given that this is the PRAC), with big squealing keyboard passages and fanfares from DeYoung but still enough raw guitar power from Shaw to make it seriously rock, especially on “Miss America”, where the close vocal harmonies owe more than a little to Queen. I really like “Come sail away”, particularly because it's one of those songs that fools you into thinking it's a ballad with its soft piano intro and gentle vocal, then about halfway through it kicks up and becomes a mid-paced rocker, while still retaining its original identity. Nice.
There's a slow sort of southern boogie feel to “Man in the wilderness”, reminds me of Blackfoot, though I know they came later so I guess I should swing that around. Still, I heard Blackfoot first so to me it's how it sounds. Nice sort of flutey sound to it on the keys, and there's more than a hint of early Kansas in it too. Another one that treads the ballad line without tipping over into it. Good strong ending. Like the medieval organ and pulsing bass opening to “Castle walls”, very Asia-like keyboard middle section, oh so proggy! Good bit of Arena there too and of course the whole thing is very reminiscent of the Alan Parsons Project, especially on “The turn of a friendly card” which ... let me just check ... yeah, came out later BUT one of the lines in the lyric is “Far beyond these castle walls” and THAT, my friends, was the debut album for Chris de Burgh, released in 1974! Spooky! And, quite possibly, a little scary.
As far as this album is concerned, it's damn good. A nice mix of prog and some straight-ahead rock with the odd bit of AOR thrown in for good measure. It doesn't really get going, for me, until about the third track, which is not to say the first two are bad, just didn't impress me that much. But does this make me suddenly want to break into a Styx binge? Do I feel like I've been missing out? Answer is no. But has it made me want to never check out another Styx album? Answer is also no.
In conclusion, I would say I'm not going to end up as enamoured of this band as Unknown Soldier is, but I can see why he likes them. Whether this is their best album, or one they should be judged on only he can tell me, but as I said at the beginning this came first in a cycle of about five albums that seem to comprise Styx's “purple patch”, so I'd have to say it's a reasonable representation of what they could do, and what they were capable of.
Rating: 7/10