The Complete Wooden Nickel Albums

The first four albums by Chicago’s Styx — Styx, Styx II, The Serpent Is Rising, and Man Of Miracles — are a fascinating collection of bombastic, hyper-earnest prog songs not dissimilar to Kansas’s contemporaneous work, classical interpolations (Copland and Bach both show up), and crunching hard rock. The creative battle that would ultimately define the band, between the guitarists’ interest in big riffs and boogie and keyboardist/vocalist Dennis DeYoung’s desire to write and sing show tunes, was already present but not as cheesy or crass as it would later become. You can hear them trying on hats — a Southern rock pastiche here, some imitation Steve Miller Band there — and yes, The Serpent Is Rising is an entire concept album about their dicks. But it’s clear that this is a band with a vision and the talent to execute it, and on these early recordings, they were still open to the idea of goofy fun.