When I saw Asia in concert on the first leg of their 25th Anniversary reunion tour in 2006, the most exciting thing about the show wasn't the music or the performance, which generally felt over-rehearsed and unspontaneous, but the mere fact of the reunion itself. They were only a few weeks into the tour by that point, and many of my giddy fellow ticketholders expressed (only half joking) concern that the band might split apart and call the whole thing off before they took the Pabst Theater stage. So when they actually did take the stage - to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance", no less - and when they appeared to be having a blast playing together again, something about it felt a little bit miraculous, even if the actual set list - a perfunctory greatest hits collection which included every song from their somewhat legendary 1982 self-titled debut album and a token number from each of the guys' previous musical ventures - felt moldy and predictable.
As with the tour, which nearly two years later is still rolling right along (generating last year's double-live record Fantasia - Live in Tokyo in the process), the most interesting thing about Asia's latest record Phoenix, the first one to feature the band's original supergroup line-up since 1983's Alpha (and the first to feature new Wetton/Downes compositions since 1990's half-and-half-assed Then and Now), is that these guys stuck this reunion out long enough (and, given a couple of recent health scares, that they survived long enough) to make it. The music, however, is a bit of a snooze, but that's almost beside the point. Because, I mean, seriously, even Roger Dean is back (although his cover painting is relegated the CD booklet centerfold). How awesome is that?
The concept behind Asia has always been a little problematic for critics, and, too a certain extent demonstrated by this new album, by the band themselves. Despite the fact that, in 1982, the band represented an unprecedented summit of some of progressive rock's greatest talents - singer-bassist John Wetton (ex-King Crimson, U.K., Uriah Heep), keyboardist Geoff Downes (ex-Buggles), guitarist Steve Howe (ex-Yes), and drummer Carl Palmer (ex-E.L.P.) - what they actually produced as Asia wasn't really prog-rock at all - but rather a new, unlikely and distinctive self-aggrandized pop/rock hybrid, fusing catchy melodies and radio-ready four minute love songs to towering arena rock arrangements, meticulously detailed production, and the occasional virtuoso-for-virtuoso's-sake flourish.
The band's biggest, most defining hit single "Heat of the Moment" can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best skinny-tie power pop of its particular moment, even if the guys who produced the song were the leading proponents of the bloated rock excess that skinny tie power pop emerged in opposition to. Like a vaccine which uses a form of a virus to battle that same virus, Asia was a prog-rock antidote to prog-rock.
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The same can't be said of their reunion album Phoenix, named less for the band's renewal than for the speedy recovery of John Wetton and Carl Palmer, who have both suffered heart problems since the reunion tour began. Phoenix does feature a couple of songs that speak directly to these experiences - songs like "Nothing's Forever" and, most notably, the album closing "An Extraordinary Life" which, borne on the shoulders of weighty, earnest cliches, - Live for the future, Forget yesterday - are nevertheless precisely the kind of urgent, big-sounding, melody-driven, granite-serious pop songs that made Asia simultaneously one of the best-loved and most punchline-able bands of their day. Opener "Never Enough" is a fierce, socially conscious rocker, whose stomping rhythm attack, decisively soaring chorus, and heavily detailed production will feel instantly (and wonderfully) familiar to fans of the band's first album.
Unfortunately, the bulk of this gratuitously bulky (12 songs, 65 minutes) record is as saggy as an old man's belly, and these highlights only serve to accentuate that sad fact. As with their stage show, Phoenix never feels quite as invigorated as its creators say they feel. Instead, despite its impressive sound, it most often comes off effortful and labored. Moreover, by padding the songs' arrangements with pointless instrumental passages - like the ridiculous synthesizer and timpani fanfare that opens "Nothing's Forever" and recurs throughout the song - and by willing the inclusion of a couple of eight minute suites, the band seems determined to revise their legacy as prog's original pop group.
Most egregious is "Sleeping Giant / No Way Back / Reprise" (and that's exactly how it's billed in the tracklisting), which takes one of the record's better songs, all pulsing bass grooves and a typically heroic Wetton vocal, and straitjackets it into the middle of a spacey, new agey instrumental. Not only is it a needless burden on the song, but it adds more drag to the pace of a already pace-challenged record.
Even more disappointing is the general absence of the muscular rhythm work Steve Howe brought to the band's first two albums, which has been replaced with a lot of self-involved (however impressive) acoustic noodling. You can't help but feel that Mr. Howe wouldn't rather be at home picking and grinning in a rocking chair (an exquisitely carved wooden rocking chair dating back a few centuries, no doubt) One of the best songs here is the haltingly syncopated "Wish I'd Known All Along", coincidentally the only song here credited solely to Howe. It's a telling suggestion of what might have been had Howe - who, despite the new Asia album, will actually be touring with Yes this summer - fully engaged.
It's hard to complain about the songs themselves. With the exception of the insufferably bloated ballad "Heroine", none of them are all that bad. They almost invariably have catchy melodies and solid hooks, even when the lyrics are dull and generic. But the record is weighted down by a sense of ceremony. Put simply, too many of these songs start with a gong. When the band took the stage to the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance", it was apparent that they were goofing on themselves, popping their own balloon, but on Phoenix, they come across utterly humorless, blowing the damn thing up again, bigger than before.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Phoenix" by Asia
Frontiers / EMI Records
Released 4/15/08
Produced by John Wetton, Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, Carl Palmer
65 min.
SONGS: Never Again - Nothing's Forever - Heroine - Sleeping Giant / No Way Back / Reprise - Alibis - I Will Remember You - Shadow of a Doubt - Parallel Worlds / Vortex / Deya - Wish I'd Known All Along - Orchard of Mines - Over and Over - An Extraordinary Life
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