Lawrence Gowan harmonizes over 23 years with Styx, their new album

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When the pandemic hit in 2020, the members of Styx shelved the ambitious concept album, Crash of the Crown, they were working on.

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Like many, the members of the veteran American progressive rock band figured it wouldn’t take long to wait for COVID-19: five or six weeks at most. Three months later, the band decided to listen to the songs, which had all been written before the pandemic.

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“To our surprise, the songs seemed to relate lyrically to a lot of what we were going through,” Styx singer and keyboardist Lawrence Gowan said in an interview during a tour stop in Victoria, Columbia. British. “So by extension, that would mean the world at large was probably having those kinds of emotions. It prompted us to end the record somehow.

A few new songs were written, and the whole album encapsulated a kind of hope that the whole world was desperately looking for as the pandemic lingered. Crash of the Crown, released in 2021, includes several songs that showcase the Chicago band’s signature feel-good feeling that made them fan favorites in the late 1970s and early 80s, although that they were often met with skepticism or outright hostility by critics and stages while bumping into the rise of punk and New Wave.

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But if the band members had hit on some sort of universal momentum during the pandemic, they did so on their terms. Crash of the Crown is packed with harmony-filled, synth-heavy, and expertly performed melodic anthems such as Reveries, Hold Back the Darkness, the defiant The Fight of Our Lives, and Coming Out the Other Side, all showcasing the seriousness of the group “to seize the mentality of the day.

“There’s a continuous thread that runs from Fight of Our Lives to Coming Out the Other Side, where there’s this sense of renewal coming out of a cataclysmic event that, at the time of writing, was still unresolved. name,” says Gowan, who will join her bandmates and Heart’s Nancy Wilson at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton on October 12-13. “But it seems to take life to be the pandemic we’ve all been battling.

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Now in its 50th year, Styx has a long history of releasing elaborate concept albums, from 1973’s The Serpent is Rising to 1981’s Paradise Theater to 1983’s Kilroy Was Here and up to 2017’s The Mission, which featured a narrative relatively linear on the first inhabited. mission to Mars. It might seem refreshingly out of step with modern music’s focus on singles and TikTok videos. Plus, given the band’s long history and vast array of hits, Styx could have easily sunk into nostalgia after entering a lucrative phase of nonstop touring in 1999, when Gowan joined the act as a replacement for co-founder Dennis DeYoung. But unlike many bands of a certain vintage, the six-piece (even if you include producer and co-writer Will Evankovich) is prone not only to release new material, but also to include a heavy dose of it in sets. live. The band also released The Same Stardust EP in 2021, a “Record Store Day” bonus exclusive which included even more new material mixed in with live material.

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“Part of the soul of a band — a big part, the yin and yang of a band — is to go out and play live and see how people react to your music,” Gowan says. “It’s the most enjoyable, for me anyway, and visceral confirmation that you’re doing it right. But also the creative side has to be kept alive; it has to be kindled and addressed. That’s the Another vital element is that the creative side of things continues to move forward and the band still has momentum in that direction.

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Formed in 1972, Styx’s original lineup included bassist Chuck Panozzo and his drummer brother John, who died in 1996, guitarist James (JY) Young and DeYoung. Tommy Shaw joined the act in 1976 as guitarist and became one of Styx’s main songwriters. Many hits followed – Come Sail Away, Too Much Time On My Hands, Mr. Roboto – as well as many clashes of musical style. Things came to a head in 1999, when the band opted to tour without DeYoung. As recently like 2021, DeYoung said he would like to reunite with the band for another tour. However, the publicity material behind Crash of the Crown includes bold pleas to reporters not to ask questions about DeYoung, suggesting a reunion is not imminent.

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Some of Gowan’s biggest hits as a solo artist, including Strange Animal and Criminal Mind, have made their way to Styx sets and he has a full album of new material in the bank that he hopes to release whenever his tour schedule with Styx will allow it. He’s now been a member of Styx since 1999, meaning he’s been in the band twice as long as his own heyday from 1982 to 1995 as a successful recording artist in Canada. Crash of the Crown’s title track features a first for Styx. While three-or-more harmonies have long been a hallmark of all phases of their career, the song marks the first time all three of the band’s vocalists – Gowan, Shaw and Young – have contributed lead vocals.

“From the first day we got together, when I joined the band 23 years ago, one of the first things to test was how our three voices blend together,” he says. “That three-part Styx harmony is a staple of so many of their songs. When they rang, we knew we were off to a good start. This has been honed over the years and has become second nature for so many years. Before a show, anyone can sing anything in the dressing room, no matter what it is, and suddenly you’ll hear two or three more voices tune and harmonize effortlessly. It’s a reward for working together for so many years.

Heart’s Styx and Nancy Wilson play at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton on October 12-13 and tickets start at $59.50 at jubileeauditorium.com/edmonton.