Light up, everybody! Styx hits its stride (or something) with album # 5, Equinox

Referenced: Jamaican toasters—songs about girlfriends moving in—K-tel Records—Kansas—America’s Bicentennial

It’s Election Day 2020, and what better way to distract myself then by writing about another Styx album?

The selection in my sights this week is album # 5, Equinox. One thing I hadn’t realized when I set out to write this was how apt the finale of the record is. But we’ll get to that.

This fifth record finds the band recovering from the muddled prog-rock psychedelic boogie of the previous two records, The Serpent is Rising and Man of Miracles. Keyboardist/vocalist Dennis DeYoung has a greater role, while guitarists James Young and John Curulewski have one song each (and Curulewski’s is a brief instrumental), though they did co-write some stuff.

Side One of Equinox, and the fabulous Light Up

Equinox kicks off with the glorious arena-rocker “Light Up.” Actually, only the chorus is truly inspired—some instrumental choices are questionable, and the verse is so-so. But ooh, that chorus—especially at the end, where the band adds handclaps and bongos—is choice, as my buddy Nick from the post office used to say (although he was usually talking about Jamaican toasters like Eek-A-Mouse and Yellowman). Seriously, the track begins with what sounds like someone inhaling a big old toke.

The hits don’t stop there—”Lorelei” is next. Has there ever been a more jubilant rock song about your girlfriend moving in? No. This song may actually have been my introduction to Styx, because it was on one of my first vinyl album purchases, a K-Tel record called Power House. That and California Sun were my big two K-Tel records there for awhile. I guess I was 10? 11?

In “Mother Dear,” the third track, the band (well, DeYoung) paints a bleaker picture.

Lonely feelings in the city
One room flat with crumbling walls
Sirens play a distant melody
Neon shadows paint the halls

-Styx, “Mother Dear”

It’s actually a pretty fun song when it kicks in. To me, this sounds like it presages the group’s Kilroy Was Here/”Mr. Roboto” period. Credit where it’s due: Styx was ready for new wave in a way that its peers, like REO Speedwagon and Kansas, were not.

“Lonely Child”—A theme seems to be emerging, and it’s a few bong-hits darker than the opening tracks. By now it’s obvious that the band has pretty much left its guitar-centred days behind it, giving full reign to DeYoung, he of the banshee tremolo. This one trudges off into pomposity; the problem with Styx isn’t that it could be pompous musically, but the often puerile lyrics do not justify all the bombast. Plus I’m not sure how wise it was to invite a “lonely child” to “come spend your life with me,” even back in ’75.

Midnight Ride gives Judas Priest a run for its money

“Midnight Ride”—Well, the guitar-rock is back. The lone entry from James Young, it cowbells hard, like a proto-“Breaking the Law” (Judas Priest). Too long though.

“Born for Adventure”—Put on your buccaneer boots and strap yourselves in. This five-minute epic blends rock and Renaissance Fair folk in a way only Styx was able, sometimes in a not-entirely-offensive manner. The chorus features the immortal words: “I was born for adventure/Women whiskey and sin/No I never surrender/Live by the sword ’til the end.”

“Prelude 12″—A 12-string acoustic interlude. Nice, in its way, and it intros the final song…

“Suite Madame Blue”—This one builds slowly (some might say too slowly) and fluctuates between bombastic and acoustic passages, at least until the big finish. (The acoustic guitar gives it a kind of Kansas/”Dust in the Wind” flavour of blacklight existentialism that heads were so fond of back in the ’70s.) Near the four-minute mark, the band cranks up the guitars and starts harmonizing in multi-layered vocals the word “America” before singing “Red white and blue/Gaze in your looking-glass/You’re not a child anymore.” Is the U.S. the “lonely child” of the earlier song? Why not? According to Wiki, “Suite Madame Blue” is about the U.S.’s then-impending Bicentennial. Ah, simpler times, simpler times.

Facts about Equinox:

• this was the band’s first album for A&M, which signed them after the success of “Lady” (off 1973’s Styx II)

• this was also the last album with Curulewski who left “to spend time with his family” (who did that in 1975?). This is according to Wiki, apparently quoting an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music episode about the band that I didn’t know existed but which, in fact, does. (You can watch it here.) Except for “Prelude 12,” Curulewski only has a couple of co-writes on the record, so it’s likely he was already being squeezed out, family or no.

• Curulewski left right after the album’s release, and the band replaced him with Tommy Shaw.