Journey - Frontiers (1983)

 I've always thought the only album from Journey that you will ever, ever need was their famous 1988 Greatest Hits compilation.  And in terms of the staple radio hits, that still stands.  I did however, come into possession of a five box set of Journey albums, which include two albums that have (gasp) grown on me, albeit not by much, but have grown on me nonetheless  Those albums are Frontiers and Raised on Radio.  Frontiers is the one that I'm the most fond of, and the one that I'm writing about here, after a long stint of not having written anything on this blog since 2020.  It's an eighties album through and through - the liberal use of synthesizers, the power ballad melodies, this is music to match your mullet.  And to some extent, "it's a hard rock" album too, of course.  "Chain Reaction" is a good example of this.  And the version of the album I have here has fourteen songs instead of the usual ten, with two of the four bonus tracks, "Only the Young" and "Ask the Lonely" perhaps steering the less palatable second half away from complete blandness.  In fact, I'd probably be inclined to give this album B+ without them.  Yeah, they're not exactly masterpieces, but as someone who has a weak spot for 1980s music, they are definitely welcome additions, especially with surrounding filler  tracks like "Back Talk", "Frontiers" "Rubicon", "Liberty" and "Only Solutions" all being worthy of the skip button treatment after the first couple of playthroughs.  That being said, side A is rather excellent, with "Chain Reaction", "After The Fall" and "Troubled Child" being surprisingly good songs that never made the cut for Greatest Hits.  And that's a remarkable thing, as I've always felt Journey wasn't much outside of the hits, thus my continuing insistence that they are essentially a "greatest hits" band.  But I think Frontiers deserves to be made an exception.  A-