Neal Schon
Universe

Neal Schon is a man who needs no introduction, he is one of the most acclaimed and most successful of the rock guitarists. He has sold plenty of albums with Journey, the band he founded in the seventies, and he was an original member of Hardline and played with Santana and Bad English to name a few. Hall of famer as well as several solo albums, a lot can be said about this guy. His new album is called Universe and it was done with Journey drummer Narada Michael Walden. It contains fifteen songs of which some of them are covers and some new songs.

Stylewise it is instrumental rock music with bluesy rock, R&B, rock-fusion and many different soulful style of music. Neal’s emotional guitars are impressive, as is the production that sounds really good and where Neal lets the guitar do the talking and it talks really well. It is a pretty varied album too, quite different from what you can expect from Neal’s main band Journey. But it is also a long album with a playing time of over seventy minutes and it feels like such a long album despite good variation and apparent depth through the songs.

The sense of length in this album is one of the downsides I notice when playing through the album, it feels like you should be a guitar nerd to keep listening for the entirety of the album. An album that I think is good, there are some excellent touches, but I would have liked a few more striking songs as it is only the Prince cover Purple Rain that really stands out for me – the one memorable track of this album. The rest of the songs are solid good songs that feels like more than adequate background songs.

If you are a fan of Neal’s solo albums, or just want to explore other avenues of the Journey hero it is a good album to check out. I know that it is an album that will not make you disappointed, it should be pleasing enough for everyone that buys it. So, the Purple Rain might not be quite enough for me to be really taken with this album, but it works and I like it.

 

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