JOE PERRY
S/T (Sony)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

---

Aerosmith guitarist and legit rock and roll legend Joe Perry takes a vacation from the band and makes his own record for the first time in over two decades. This self-titled album is quite different from his early 80s Joe Perry Project releases, though. First of all, that was an angry Joe Perry who recorded Let The Music Do The Talking in 1979 and I've Got The Rock'n'Rolls Again in 1980, still pissed about the chain of events that led to end of his first go-round with Aerosmith. Also, he had a real band to play with, which will always be preferable to recording nearly every track yourself, no matter what some artists might say in this or that interview. The best music is always a result of chemistry. Finally, he brought Ralph Mormon into the Joe Perry project to handle lead vocals, but here, like I said, he's handling everything himself. Perry is a more than competent backing vocalist, and his voice has proven the perfect blending sound for Steven Tyler, but as a lead vocalist he just doesn't cut it. It's a smooth, rather anonymous voice that makes even the sauciest groove tunes on this album sound sort of like an Aerosmith cover band that needs a new vocalist.

Then again, so what? He's Joe Perry. His guitar riffs are instantly loveable, he fills the album with tone that defies description (except to say that he must have sold his soul to get the guitar sound on "Lonely," because I sure haven't heard anything that hot, at least not in recent memory). And the farther into the album you get, the less you think about the vocals as a deficit. Why? It's the grooves, man. They getcha. Same reason Aerosmith is still out there. Joe Perry still sculpts out some of the coolest grooves in rock, after all these years.

The CD comes with a video documentary and a program for making your own mix, if that's your thing.

© 2005 - DJ Johnson