Styx
Crystal Ball

THE REVIEW

Premise

It is often said to avoid any form of song-by-song description for an album - that is, what with an annoying Anglo-Saxon terminology, is called track-by-track. This is because it makes the reading cumbersome (and I am somewhat of a world champion in this discipline), because often it ends up being more irritating than useful, possibly because it requires a musical cultural background significantly above zero (which I believe I do not have).
Well, in light of all this, I will do what I have almost always wanted to do. To put it like Rhett Butler when he leaves Scarlett O'Hara crying on the red carpeted staircase, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

I warn you: it will be a mess.

 En bien

It's nineteen seventy-six; my mother was fifteen, my father was studying cheerfully for his driving test, and I was minus nine years old. The Styx, for a year in the classic lineup with the addition of the blond Tommy Shaw, released their sixth album. "Crystal Ball" opens the golden era (for the avoidance of symbolic-arcane misunderstandings it doesn't involve any 1.6180...) of the band from Chicago, which, through some excellent works (among all "The Grand Illusion" and "Pieces Of Eight"), will culminate in the beautiful "Paradise Theater" of 1980. For further information contact the shooting star, to which this review is also dedicated.

The LP is black and contains a long groove that spirals toward the center on both sides (perhaps some youngsters don't know this). The tracks are seven, just like the seven dwarfs (those of Snow White, neh?), the years in Tibet, the noteworthy pimples on my face today, the municipalities of the Asiago plateau, the brides and brothers, the hills of Rome (city where a lot of ties are sold), the Champions Cups of the odious cousins, Scientology and Freemasonry.

"Put Me On" opens: this track is a suffering and drawn-out ride through synthesized fields and lashing guitars, towards a horizon of melodic openness, where the beautiful voice of Dennis De Young finds refuge in a chorus of lightness, before the rain of rhythm overwhelms it in its progression in an acutely high-pitched groan. The lament is that of a sweet "Mademoiselle": she, urged by a very effective chorus, unfolds among charming guitar appreciations and the pulsating heart of the bass: it is a beautiful track, pompous and clear, in the full style of this great overseas band.
The creative vein provided by the fairer sex is evident also from the next track, "Jennifer"; introduced by a memorable monosyllabic phrasing, the song is a fine A.O.R. (if I really have to make a blind guess into the cauldron of genres). Tommy Shaw and James Young's guitars are flashes of light, the drums are a joyful metronome.

If so far we have talked about good songs but not true gems, "Crystal Ball" blows everything. The title track is a song that, in the musical line - the so-called pomp rock - and the peculiar timbre of the Chicago band, I would dare to define perfect: the sweet piano intro, the impeccable choral refrain, the keyboard solo to anticipate the guitars that first support the singing and then free themselves in flights of carefree fancy. To perhaps a slightly lesser extent, the song presents the characteristics of what is perhaps the true emblem of Styx, namely that "Come Sail Away" that chills the blood in the veins with its beauty.
"Shooz" instead is a dry hard rock that seems to serve the purpose of "breaking" the emotional tension of the previous song (the same "Come Sail Away", after all, regardless of the side change of the vinyl, in the subsequent "The Grand Illusion" will be followed by the very tight "Miss America"). Young's singing becomes hoarse, the guitars churn out riffs, the friendly brothers Chuck and John Panozzo demonstrate their ability in the rhythm rooms, besides creating a funny and curious counterpoint to the tall blondes of the guitars.

"This Old Man" is another great piece of this LP: the evocative singing of the electric guitar gives way to a crystalline acoustic, designed to cloak with warmth the heartfelt story narrated with passion by the talented Alberto Angel... ehm, Dennis De Young. The monosyllabic choral - constant in this work - and the drumroll medieval tournament of the instrumentally crooked John Panozzo lead to an interlude of more extensive breath, before the guitar solo bursts to frame what is the hallmark of these musicians - the vocal polyphony, of rare purity.

It closes with "Clair De Lune/Ballerina", a not-too-hidden homage to the talented French composer Claude Debussy and another qualitative peak of the LP; on the immediate subtlety of organ and piano, first bass and drums and finally the guitars break in for a truly remarkable crescendo. The intensity remains at unbearable levels until everything fades - clearly to monosyllabic chorus, this time on the themes of the classic "la" - into the silence of the moonlight. Simply, a great track.

The Styx, a very talented band and not too well known in Italy, at least by the less seasoned generations, begin to ultimately suggest that they are not second players, but among the protagonists of the North American scene of the seventies and eighties, alongside other valid groups in various shades of genre: among the most famous are remembered Rush, Kansas, Pavlov's Dog, Journey, the A-team, the surgeons of M*A*S*H, the Los Angeles Layers, and the Canadian national team of curling at the Winter Olympics in Calgary.

N'est-ce-pas?

I close with a disturbing question: does it show that, having finished the exams of the first semester and being on vacation for a few weeks, I have a lot of time to fool around?