GENERATIONS

This has been quite a ride for "Journey". Some thirty years after their excellent debut (and still unmatched) album. The way was paved with very good albums (the first three) and an awful lot of poor and totally AOR ones.

This "Generations" opens on a decent rocker which is very much "U2" oriented ("In The Name Of Love" came straight to my mind while I was listening to this song). But I prefer to listen to such a rock tune than most of their songs for the last thirty years.

The rock feel is very much present throughout the album. Not that all these songs are great, but at least they are melodic and, here and there, one can enjoy the excellent guitar work for the genius.

These characteristics apply to most of the songs from this album. "Believe" is another example to only name it, on the heavy side though. For sure, the relation with prog is not quite perceptible and one should consider this album as a pure rock streaming performance (with an AOR tendency for sure).

Another good song from this album (after the opening one) is "Out Of Harm's Way". Very much Led Zep oriented (maybe it is the reason why it is my fave in here). Some sort of "Achilles Last Stand" clone. Superb beat, great guitar, decent vocals: the highlight as far as I'm concerned.

Same sort of comments about the speedy hard rocking "In Self-Defense". Another winner for sure. Again, Neal is particularly neat in this performance. He was too much on the background for many, many years and it is a pleasure to hear him like this again.

The travel into some giants of rock music goes on with the very much Purple oriented "Better Together" (Mark III era). A solid and heavy blues rock which kicks quite a bit. The hectic "Gone Crazy" and the delightful rock ballad" Beyond The Clouds" just confirm that this album is by far their best one since "Next" in 1977 (but I admit that it was not very difficult).

A good rock album. Three stars.