"The Grand Illusion" by Styx (1977)

View the Premise & Ground Rules for Revisiting Vinyl.


Key Tracks:Tommy Shaw's synth-heavy pop opus  Fooling Yourself, Dennis DeYoung's guitar-heavy prog opus Castle Walls, and the comfortable medium that became one of the band's greatest hits - Come Sail Away.

Obvious Filler:The closing track - The Grand Finale - is really just a poor excuse for a reprise of some of the record's strongest tracks - Superstar, Come Sail Away and The Grand Illusion.  The band would have been much better served to just end with the penultimate track - Castle Walls - or to come up with something else instead.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

The term prog-pop seems like an oxymoron - mostly because the two appear inherently incongruent on the surface.  I can't think of another band that appeals to both markets so easily - maybe because Styx seems to work best when the band it at odds with itself.  Tommy Shaw's grandiose guitar overtures perfectly counterbalance Dennis DeYoung's synth-heavy prog explorations.  Either on its own would be overbearing.  However, the two together forge a sound unlike anything else.  Hearing Fooling Yourself or Castle Walls in a vacuum would seem heavy-handed.  But, lisening them offset one another is totally different experience.

Conveniently, this harmonious dissonance reaches its apex on the opening track of the record's B-side - which also happens to be the only song not written by Shaw or DeYoung.  Each furiously vies for top billing on Miss America, and - thankfully - neither comes out victorious.  The result seems at first markedly uneven, but ends up being the heaviest and (strangely) most balanced track on the LP.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  The aforementioned Shaw-guitar/DeYoung-synth conflict actually adds a degree of consistency to the effort, with DeYoung's synths holding everything together by a nose.  The album is further cemented by lyrics that deal primarily with the onus of fame - despite contributions from three different lyricists.

Up next, "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood (1982).