Steve Perry 5: The Season

With nearly lightning speed, Steve Perry put out more new music only a year after his comeback with Traces. Granted, it was a Christmas single—an ill-advised cover of “Silver Bells”, plus an edit of same and a version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” with melodic liberties—but it did qualify as new.

As it turned out, these were merely appetizers for The Season, an eight-song collection of well-worn holiday standards, accompanied by the guy who produced Traces plus subdued drumming by Vinnie Colaiuta. When they’re sung straight, he just sounds old and tired, but those are more palatable than the tag he adds to “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and the overly smooth touches on “Winter Wonderland” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”. We do have to give him points for restoring the intro verse to “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” but we also wonder whether the younger man would have belted these better, or just as cringingly.

A year later, following his recent trend, the album was reissued in a deluxe digital edition that began with two new original songs. “Maybe This Year” was a new original with some originality, for lack of a better word, while “This Christmas” revived an obscure Donny Hathaway track. While an improvement over the original program, the overall melancholy isn’t likely to make your spirits bright.

“Maybe This Year” proved to be a prophetic title as two years after that a third incarnation of the album happened, this time in physical format on the revived Dark Horse label, of all places. The Season 3 offered a rejigged order and six new tracks scattered among everything that had gone before. The album now opens with the Louis Armstrong perennial “What A Wonderful World” (as opposed to the Sam Cooke song we figured he’d be all over, but that’s not exactly Xmassy). “Jingle Bell Rock” is taken at about half the speed of the original, with an attempt at slow funk, an approach that’s a little more effective on “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” but even creepier with “Let It Snow”. The big surprise is a virtual duet on “Call Me Irresponsible” with his deceased father; it’s very sweet, if not exactly Grammy material. The closing recitation of “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” is delivered with no accompaniment, wisely, but it caps what is still an extremely gloomy album.

Steve Perry The Season (2021)—2
2024 The Season 3: same as 2021, plus 8 extra tracks