JAMES YOUNG-City Slicker

James "JY" Young first solo cd away from Styx is a mixed bag. Some of these songs were left over from the Styx hay day, while some were written for this cd. Most of the songs would have fit on just about any Styx cd, and a shame some didn't. But the the biggest problem is the production, or lack of. Maybe it was done this way to give the songs a more raw edge to them, but for me it doesn't work.

The title track is a fun loving song about the city life and how boring the country is. A good riff thru the song along with the shout along chorus makes for a good song.

Something To Remember You By is a good little rocker, but I find the redundancy of this getting old after a while. Cut about 30 to 45 seconds off the song would have helped it out a lot.

Waiting is JY's attempt to be like DeYoung, the hit maker of the Styx, who was know for his sweeping ballads. Waiting, although it has some very cliche lyrics ("I must make the move myself, or get left on the shelf") is still a nice change of pace for JY. There was a time in early Styx history when JY was the main singer for the group, and he could have done a song like this.

Still Feel Your Love has a good keyboard sound running thru it, and JY sings in his lower (better) register.

Running Out of Time, has a nice urgency to it, and some smoking guitar work in it.

Chain me Down and Wild Dogs are made from the same cloth, and sound a lot like your typical one song by JY on a Styx cd. Which is good intro, a few lyrics, keyboard and or guitar solo, then back to the lyrics as they are repeated over and over. Although these two song follow that pretty close, they are still good rockers. Put Styx production values on these two songs, or the whole cd and it would have been better.

No Mistake and Empty Promises has some good guitar work going on in them, but other than that that, they are pretty lame. Good guitar doesn't always make the song good.

Prisoner of War is by far the worst song on the cd. The lyrics are silly, the drums sound horrible, as does the singing. This song should be burned.

Over all there are some good songs, but the production makes the songs sound muddled. It needs the crisp clear production that was on the Styx cds. At times the productions gets to me and I just turn the cd off. Better production would have made for a great cd, rather than an ok cd.

GRADE C+