Hi, everyone. Alexthony Goodetano, here, the internet's least busiest music music nerd, with some great news: Former Journey frontman Steve Perry is finally back, with his third solo album, following 1984's Street Talk and 1994's For the Love of Strange Medicine. Traces was recorded over the course of three years, and finally released to the public on October 5th of this year. So, yeah, I'm a bit late to the review party for it. But, screw it. It's Steve Perry. I'm doing this. I'm a big Journey fan, as are most people, so the news that Steve Perry was finally returning to music after all this time was incredible. And so, now that Traces is here, I'm gonna go through it track by track and see if it was worth the wait. Does he still have the golden voice? Well, there's ten tracks, so let's find out.
Track #1: "No Erasin'"
The first line of the first track on this record is "I know it's been a long time coming", which is honestly just a perfect way to open such a long-awaited album. By the way, sorry if the quotation mark placements bother anyone reading this. Two of the song titles use the single mark like that, just a heads-up. But, anyway, "No Erasin'" is an overall decent opening track. The instrumental grabs you and pulls you in from the start, the chorus is ungodly catchy, and the verse melody is easy on the ears. Lyrically, however, is where the song begins to fall apart. The chorus is well-written, and there is a relatively easy to follow storyline to the song. But the songwriting that is supposed to tell that story kinda falls flat on it's face a couple times. The first verse didn't have a single rhyming lyric, neither does the pre-chorus, and the bridge after the second chorus was, while audibly pleasing, ultimately just a jumbled word salad of a section. But, while listening to the instrumental, it's easy to overlook the flaws and just jam out to a Perry's voice.
Track #2: "We're Still Here"
Here we go, the first straight-up good track on the album. "We're Still Here" is great. The music starts off slow, but then grows into this beautiful instrumental. The guitar solo in the middle rocked. I don't have very many complaints in the songwriting department this time. This song has solid lyrics, accompanied by a haunting melody. Some of the inner-rhymes don't really work (i.e. "running" and "calling" in the chorus), but they're so few that they're almost not noticeable. Could've done without the "brother to brother/sister to sister" thing, though. That felt a little forced, given the "you'll never bring me down" vibe that I'm picking up from the lyrics. But, one thing I gotta give all my praise for is Steve's voice on this track. Good golly gee heck, his voice is absolutely beautiful here. Yeah, he always had a fantastic voice, but I legitimately got chills after hearing his voice in this song. My favorite lyric is "city boys and city girls runnin' wild", just because of the way his voice sounds when he said "boy". Oh, also, it was great to hear Steve Perry say "city boy" again. He also looks friggin' scary in the thumbnail, just to throw that out there.
Track #3: "Most of All"
I love this song. It's easily one of the best songs on the album. I don't have any complaints, there's nothing about it that I bumped into. This is a stunning song about love and loss, which I realize now is about Perry's late girlfriend Kelly (may she rest in piece). The chorus of this song is so profound; It goes, "To the ones who've lost their most of all/Many years won't heal with tears/Still call their most of all". That is beautiful, and it's a sentiment that I feel like most people can get behind. The writing in this song is really good; The lyrics are sure to resonate with someone who's lost someone close to them, myself included. This is just an awesome song. Good show, Steve Perry. Jolly good show.
Track #4: "No More Cryin'"
Clocking in at a whopping 4:28, "No More Cryin'" is the longest song on the album (just barely beating the 4:21 "Most of All"). And, surprisingly, it doesn't feel like it. It may start to lose the pace it built up at around the 4 minute mark for some people but, for me personally, I think it overall does a lot with the amount of time it takes up. On the surface, it seems like another cheesy love song. And it is, it really is. But it's the good kind of cheesy, y'know? The instrumental is slow, yet booming, Steve's vocals soar out of the video, and they both compliment each other perfectly. Seriously, though, Steve's voice when he says "No more" sound like he's back in his Journey days. If there was ever any doubt that he'd lost his golden voice, this song cemented that he more assuredly has not. The best part of this song for me is, strangely, the ending. Steve starts chanting "Won't, I won't" repeatedly and his voice starts to fade out, but the music stays the same level of sound that it was. It doesn't sound like anything special when I describe it, but it sounds really cool. I don't know why, it just does. And the way the song stops and then jumpstarts before the final chorus was awesome, too. This is a really solid track.
Track #5: "In the Rain"
We're halfway there, so it's time for another somber loss song to completely kill the hype built up by "No More Cryin'". Not saying that's a bad thing, however, because this song is so soothing. The slow piano in the background, Steve's sincere, almost pained-sounding vocal performance, and the downright poetic lyrics make this a really emotional ride. The second verse is the most well-written part of it. It goes, "Your face in a photograph, starin' back inside a lens/Pretending you're here tonight; Yeah, you've got me chasing shadows". It didn't rhyme, but I don't mind that in this case because, with imagery as vivid as that, you really don't need to rhyme. It would've been nice, sure, but that paints such a pretty picture that I'm willing to bite my tongue and move on. You can tell that he wrote this song, as well as "Most of All", for Kelly. It's so heartwarming, I can't help but enjoy it. I'm not crying, you are.
Track #6: "Sun Shines Gray (ft John 5)"
What's this? A guest musician? Yeah, I don't know who John 5 is either, but he supplied the electric guitar riff that you can hear throughout the song. And, as awesome as it is, he drowns out Perry's vocals on more than one occasion. Very jarring. But the guy is a very good guitarist, so I'll have to give his solo music a listen. I had to listen to this song a lot so I can actually try to hear Perry's voice. Thank God for websites like azlyrics. Unfortunately, the songwriting, while not bad, seriously takes a serious nosedive after "In the Rain" ripped my still-beating heart out of my chest and made me look at it (metaphorically). The lyrics get better towards the end of the song, and there are a few good lines sprinkled in during the beginning, but wow. The dropoff is huge. It's not the weakest song on the album, that honor goes to "No Erasin'", but it's a close second. Not a bad song, though. None of these songs are ones that I'd classify as "bad". But some are better than others, and this is sadly not one of them. Awesome guitar part, though.
Track #7: "You Belong to Me"
Strange title wordage aside, this is another good song. Okay, Steve, an album is supposed to get progressively better and better as it goes along, not constantly jump from meh to good, then back to meh, and then back to good again. I'm gonna get whiplash! But, yeah, this song is great. Another loss song, but this is probably the best of the bunch. This is kind of a personal pet peeve, but I'm not a fan of the phrase "you belong to me" being used romantically. The way Perry uses the phrase in this instance sorta makes sense, but it still really lessens the intended mood if you ask me. But, it's okay because this song features some of the best writing in the whole album, the chorus and outro especially. It's poetic, it's wholesome, it's beautiful, and I love every second of it.
Track #8: "Easy to Love"
Keeping with the whiplash joke I made earlier, this song drops it back down to just "okay" again. "Easy to Love", while not a bad song, is extremely underwhelming coming off the heels of "You Belong to Me". One one hand, Steve's vocal performance in this song is the most soulful and mellow that it's been yet, and is perfectly complimented by the equally soulful and mellow instrumental. But, on the other hand, the songwriting is very bland and almost cliche at times. Perry's soft vocals push it slightly above "No Erasin'", but only slightly. This isn't a bad song, no, I just wish more had been done with it. This song has one of the best instrumentals on the whole album, but the whole thing is brought down by the repetitive lyrics. Loved Steve's voice in this song, though.
Track #9: "I Need You"
Steve Perry covering The Beatles? Take my money right now! I can't talk about the songwriting, cause Perry didn't write it. George Harrison did. But, Perry gave his own spin on the instrumental, as you should do when doing a cover. I'm happy to report that Perry gives a very faithful rendition of this song. His voice is soothing, and so is the music attached to it. This is all-around a really good cover. It's a shame that it's the shortest song on the album, clocking in at 2:58. It's one of the highlights of the album, though, so I can't fault the length. I know that there's an unspoken rule about covering The Beatles, which is never cover The Beatles, but, if you're gonna, do it like Steve Perry did. Originally, but still faithfully.
Track #10: "We Fly"
The final track on the album, "We Fly", is another good song, ending Traces on a high note. The song starts out with Perry singing over no music, with the instrumental slowing building up during the first verse. That was cool and unexpected. This is a simple love song. Simple, but effective. I found myself getting lost in the blend of voice and music more so during this song than I did with the previous nine tracks. Great vocal performance, decent lyrics (the chorus is once again the best part), and a slow, melodic instrumental. This was a good closing track. It feels like Perry came up with the title of the song first and then wrote the lyrics around it, but I can't fault that since that's what I do. But, if that's what he did, then it worked.
And there you have it. Traces is an overall good album that proves once and for all that Perry has not lost his golden voice. While some tracks are better than others, and the pacing gets thrown way off balance in the last half, I do still recommend it. Buy a physical copy, burn a CD, use YouTube Music, whatever you use. I'm feeling a light to decent 7 for this and I'm looking forward to future Steve Perry releases if he decides to continue making music after this.
