After three albums, Journey was at a crossroads. They had received a certain level of professional acclaim, but stardom seemed to elude them. They needed to make decisions about their future, and quickly.<\/p>\n
First step: bring in a stronger presence as lead singer. After a failed experiment with Robert Fleischmann, they brought in Steve Perry. Second, they enlisted the production expertise of Roy Thomas Baker, best known for his work with Queen.<\/p>\n
Take these ingredients, and add to the mix solid songwriting, and you have Infinity<\/i>, Journey\u2019s fourth studio effort, and the first album that truly showed the superstar power they had\u2014to a point.<\/p>\n
From the opening notes of \u201cLights,\u201d it\u2019s fairly obvious that, to use the hackneyed phrase, there was a new sheriff in town. With no disrespect meant towards Gregg Rolie, Perry\u2019s vocals ring out far stronger and fit the material much better. Baker\u2019s layering of the harmony vocals is the icing on the cake, and enriches the sound all the more.<\/p>\n
Rolie still gets his time in front of the mic\u2014as a co-lead on \u201cFeeling That Way\u201d and as the lead singer for \u201cAnytime,\u201d a one-two punch that keeps the juggernaut rolling. Granted, these songs have become standard bills of fare on classic rock radio, but one can imagine even in 1978 that hearing these for the first time made people sit up and take considerable notice. The one remaining radio hit, \u201cWheel In The Sky,\u201d seals that deal.<\/p>\n
Where Infinity<\/i> stumbles is in two places. First is lyrical development, which sounds in places as if they didn\u2019t have time to complete all the words for Perry to sing. When you\u2019re reduced to a number of \u201cla di da\u201d phrases in the bridge of \u201cLights,\u201d that\u2019s an immediate cause for alarm. Similarly, naming a song \u201cLa Do Da\u201d? Feels kinda lazy, methinks.<\/p>\n
The other concern is that many of the remaining tracks\u2014you know, the ones that commercial radio hasn\u2019t beaten to death\u2014aren\u2019t nearly as strong (though they\u2019re a marked improvement over what comprised their previous album Next<\/i>). As much as I\u2019d like to get behind the pre-\u201cFaithfully\u201d road-weary song \u201cPatiently,\u201d or tap my foot in pleasure to songs like \u201cCan Do\u201d and \u201cWinds Of March,\u201d they just don\u2019t live up to the promise and potential that \u201cFeeling That Way\u201d or \u201cWheel In The Sky\u201d clearly had.<\/p>\n
Still, Infinity<\/i> is a step in the right direction for Journey, and even with the weaker selections, spoke of greater things to come for the band.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5696],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-46911","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-journey","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46911"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}