| Neal Schon - I on U |
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| Music Disc Reviews Audio CD | ||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Dan MacIntosh | ||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 22 February 2005 | ||||||||||||||||||
Some athletes are excellent team players who rarely post notable individual statistics. Similarly, there are musicians who are much better band members than solo artists. One such team guy, if you will, is guitarist Neil Schon. Although he may not have a Keith Richards/Pete Townshend-like household name (yet), his skillful work has nonetheless been spotlighted within such high-profile rock acts as Santana, Bad English and Journey. This disc, titled i on u, is the musician’s sixth solo release to date. While it features plenty of impressive fretwork, it ultimately pales in comparison to what Schon has previously created inside collective band scenarios. Schon worked with keyboardist Igor Len and drummer Omar Hakim on this all-instrumental release, with Gary Cirimelli also contributing programming help. Together, these musicians have created a squeaky clean collection of sounds, closer to what was once called New Age music than anything even remotely like Schon’s more familiar AOR past. Schon fires off rapid licks now and again, but few of these compositions succeed at capturing the listener’s full and complete attention. Instead, it all starts to sound like professionally played background music after a while. Tracks like “Moon Dust” and “Blue Passion” find Schon applying a number of Santana-like Latin lines in places, yet this is by no means an ethnic music-related project. The vibe is rather cold instead, particularly during one titled “The Chamber.” This track lays down echoing, electronic slashing percussion underneath moody synth washes to an almost funky beat. Schon sails over this mixture with muscular yet uncomplicated melodic lines. The final track, “Father,” is a welcome soulful ballad. On it, Schon is clearly playing with feeling. In stark contrast to “The Chamber,” this composition also smolders with true personal passion. It’s the sort of template that the rest of this project ought to have been built upon in the first place. Taking a cue from the name of one of Schon’s hardly missed former bands, Bad English, this release might better be re-titled Bad Decisions. Had Schon built his tunes with a little in-studio jamming, and gone a little lighter on all the abundant the technical gloss, he might have made his solo journey away from Journey a little more worth the mileage. Instead, i on u is mostly an “i” sore. Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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