Imagine starting a band with your best friends in their basement. Over the course of a decade, you sweat it out playing every cramped teen club, backyard party, and high school dance in the midwest. After years of trials and tribulations, hard work finally pays off. You score your first hit…and another…and another. Before you know it, you’ve got four consecutive triple platinum albums and a string of Top 40 hits that rivals your heroes, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But all good things must come to an end. Creative differences and personal tensions result in the eventual breakup which in due time gives way to the obligatory reunion tour. Ideally, this is where the story should end with something along the lines of, “And they lived happily ever after…”
Well life is no fairytale. In an unexpected turn of events, your bandmates turn against you and overthrow you from the very band you started. To salt the wound, they replace you with a cheap imitation. They trade their past glory of jam packed arenas for lethargic casinos and corn dog carnivals. Their nostalgia drunk audiences could care less who’s in the band. They just want to “hEaR tHe HiTs!”: hits that YOU wrote! Does this sound unbelievable? For former Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung, this is his harsh reality.
Taking these circumstances into consideration, just the existence of DeYoung’s latest album, 26 East: Volume 1, is a personal triumph. It’s a defiant middle finger in the face of a band who abandoned him and an ageist music industry who no matter how many tens of millions of albums you’ve sold, could care less unless you fit their ever changing mold of what constitutes the “flavor of the day”. Unfortunately, classic rock radio won’t play any of these songs. They’ve conditioned their listeners to “Come Sail Away”, “Renegade”, and a select few other classics. God forbid they throw in some new music; for their heads may explode! Guess what? That’s these station programmers’ loss, because this album is damn near perfect.
On 26 East, DeYoung successfully accomplishes what Alan Parsons and Ozzy Osbourne set out to do on The Secret (2019) and Ordinary Man (2020) respectively. All three albums are musical and lyrical observations from the perspective of aging rock legends. Whereas Parsons’ and Osbourne’s albums suffer from inconsistency, sluggishness, and the gaffes of modern production (looking at you Ozzy), 26 East is a seamless combination of musical excellence and heartfelt reflection from one of rock’s most beloved voices.
“East of Midnight” opens the album in grand (no pun intended) fashion. With its heavy guitar riffs, DeYoung’s signature vocal delivery, and a bombastic array of organs and synths, it’s a throwback to the days of The Grand Illusion (1977) and Pieces of Eight (1978). If the mission was to out-Styx Styx, mission accomplished. Following this is the absolutely biting “With All Due Respect”. DeYoung has made a career of calling out society’s hypocrites. From “The Grand Illusion” (“Don’t be fooled by the radio, the TV, or the magazines.”) to “Rockin’ the Paradise” (“Big shots, crackpots bending the rules.”), to portray DeYoung as solely a hopeless romantic balladeer is plain inaccurate. “With All Due Respect” may be his most vicious take down yet, a go for the throat, savage hard rocker that wouldn’t sound out of place on Paradise Theatre (1981).
Another longtime subject of DeYoung’s lyrical content is his wife of 50 years, Suzanne. She’s the inspiration behind some of Styx’s biggest ballads including “Lady” and “Babe”. On 26 East, she inspires yet another classic in the making with “You My Love”. Musically, it’s a tribute to the orchestral ballads which flooded Top 40 radio in the late 50s and early 60s by the likes of The Righteous Brothers. While listening to it, I recalled the old Greg Kihn chorus, “They don’t write ’em like that anymore.” They don’t. DeYoung does.
Each subsequent track introduces us to a new chapter in DeYoung’s life. “A Kingdom Ablaze” is a dark number filled with new age synths that evoke shades of “Mr. Roboto”. “Unbroken” is an upbeat adult contemporary track which wouldn’t sound out of place in his 80s solo output. “Damn That Dream” is motivational AOR akin to the Crystal Ball (1976) era. I can’t help but think it contains lyrical references to his former bandmates: “All my life I have tried to make sense of this dream I’m chasing. Trying to silence the voice telling me I’m not good enough.”
I could go on about the nostalgic Beatles-esque closer that is “To the Good Old Days” which features Julian Lennon on vocals, and the prog rock theatrics of “The Promise of This Land” which examines yet another DeYoung lyrical trope, America. However, for this lifelong DeYoung diehard, amateur reviewer, and connoisseur of all things heavy and epic, the crown jewel of 26 East comes in the form of “Run for the Roses”. What begins as a delicate piano ballad transforms into a full blown arena rock anthem. It reminds me of the most moving moments in Magnum and Savatage’s catalogs. Then again, where do you think those bands learned it from? Three listens in and all I can do is raise Ronnie James Dio’s beloved horns with tears about to stream down my face. “Run for the Roses” WILL go down in history as one of DeYoung’s finest works and that’s in a catalog of fine works.
In the weeks leading up to 26 East‘s release, I’ve read countless pleas for DeYoung’s long overdue return to the band he formed. DeYoung himself insists us fans “deserve it”. The sad truth is these pleas will fall upon deaf ears as they have every year for two decades. And you know what? That’s okay. Because on 26 East, DeYoung has proven that he is just as profound and prolific now as he was in the “good old days”. These truly are “The Best of Times”.
10 out of 10
Label: Frontiers Records
Genre: AOR
For fans of: Styx, Magnum, Gutter Ballet era Savatage