Asia - XXX : A Great Return To Form

XXX is exactly the album you want to hear by Asia in their thirtieth year. It's the fifth album by the 'classic' lineup, and every song on the record is a winner. A great return to form.

It is a mature and melodic record, not as bombastic as the group's debut in 1982, but mature and majestic - befitting for a band that has almost 200 years of experience under their belts. I'm thrilled that they stick to what they do best, and quite frankly, precisely what their audience expects. They haven't modernized, they haven't re-tooled - they have delivered an album filled with tunes that even on first listening sound like old friends.

Lead singer/bassist, and songwriter John Wetton is truly at the top of his game. It was a year ago this week that he released his stunning solo release, Raised In Captivity, and in the interim he toured the world with his band of prog rock wizards UK.  Now he returns to the studio with cohorts in Asia (Geoff Downes, Steve Howe, and Carl Palmer) to serve up XXX, an extremely satisfying serving of radio ready prog/pop.

Face On The Bridge is the album's lead off single, and it sits currently at #7 on the Planet Rock Radio Airplay Chart. Geoff Downes' intro takes you straight back to a time when MTV meant music, and the music was great. He's promptly joined by guitarist Steve Howe (Yes) and drummer Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer), who were two of the absolute kings of the progressive rock world when Asia first decided to make a run at the radio charts. They join in with power chords, a rock steady rhythm, Wetton's throbbing bassline, and some sumptuous harmonies.

"it was a day, just like any other day," Wetton belts out the opening line and we are transported in time. "I walked alone, through the old town."

John Wetton sounds like a man possessed - and let's face it, he is. He almost wasn't the band's original lead singer, even though he wrote the lyrics and melodies, and he drank himself right out of the band at one point. Geffen Records executive John Kalodner had tried to insert ex-Journey frontman Robert Fleischman (co-writer of two of Journey's biggest early his, Anytime and Wheel In The Sky), who left amicably when he found Wetton to be the better man for the job. After their debut record's huge success, Wetton was shown the door on what should have been their biggest moment - Asia in Asia was to be the first ever live telecast of a concert via satellite to America by MTV. In one of those stranger than true rock and roll moments, Carl Palmer called upon his old ELP bandmate Greg Lake (who Wetton had earlier replaced in King Crimson) as a last minute stand-in, and while the band got through the show, they never regained their lost momentum. Thirty years later, and he's hail and healthy - to a large degree he dominates this album with solid songwriting and exemplary vocals.

XXX is comprised of song after song that could easily be considered singles. Bury Me In Willow is another Wetton showpiece - his voice is truly amazing, and Downes has written an album full of compositions that fit his singing like a glove. I've always found Geoff Downes to be much better suited for pop than prog - he's more songwriter than virtuoso, and his brilliant production talents are in full bloom on this tune. After the second chorus the band goes symphonic, and as Carl Palmer reminds you that he's 'that' Carl Palmer, Downes leads the band through a thrilling instrumental bridge before Wettons step back to center stage. Wetton has written a bunch of great hooks for this record, and the vocal arrangements are stunningly elegant. This is great pop music - simple as that.

Steve Howe may be rock's most eclectic guitarist - he literally introduced the rock world to chimed harmonics with Yes's Roundabout, made the nylon stringed classical guitar a standard issue piece of equipment for longhairs, and he made us all wish we'd practiced a whole lot more. In Asia, however, he puts on his rock suit and boots, and heads right off to work as a chord crunching rocker. His playing in Asia is perfect for the band, and if you didn't know, you'd swear he was Clark Kent, and not Superman. He plays for the song, provides the rock required for this band, and his solos are taught and melodic. While he may not shred, he does thrown in more than enough 'how'd he do that?' licks into the proceedings.

Wetton is surely one of England's greatest troubadours. He is a poet, and an unapologetic romantic, whether he is singing of love, or betrayal. His writing is simplistically sophisticated - while his lyrics are fairly straight ahead, they are also extremely masterful, much in the same way as McCartney's. Silly love songs? You try to write one, then get back to me. He makes a phrase like Al Gatto Nero sound perfectly natural, and will have hoards of listeners Googling that one.

XXX is a great Asia album. XXX is not going to convert the non-believers, and I'm sure that is not the band's intention - this record is a hugely successful 'give the fans what they want' moment. If you enjoyed Asia before, you'll adore this record. If you didn't, well, you might want to give it a listen and discover that when you listened to Asia in 1980, it may not have been with the right set of ears - for what Asia does, they do brilliantly, and every member is in top form here.

John Wetton. What's next for this guy? Granted, the whole of Asia is in magnificent condition, but Wetton's performance is sheer brilliance - the guy is on one hell of a winning streak, and seems to be growing stronger with each project. One of the strongest comebacks in rock history. He beat drinking, he beat heart surgery, he beat carpal tunnel, and now he's beat his best. Congratulations again, John.

Thanks to Asia, John Wetton, Frontiers Records, and Peter Noble at Noble PR.