You know a guy takes his guitar seriously when in his latest album Joe Satriani lists his “Master Guitar Tech” (Mike Manning), “Master Luthier” (Gary Brewer) and “Master Amp Guru” (Chris Barnett) along with his instrumental team of Chris Chaney/b, Kenny Aronoff/dr, Eric Caudieux/key, Lisa Coleman/p and guests Christopher Guest/mand and Jim Scott/perc. What? No mentioning of which guitar for each song?!?
Satriani is known as one of the six string masters, but as this album also demonstrates, he’s also a possessor of a magic pen, with strong compositions all throughout this latest release. Each song here is a unique color into the album’s mosaic of a picture, with each of Satriani’s solos well crafted, melodic and never self-indulgent in its majestic mastery. The moods range from a fist pumping “Big Distortion” with tons of heavy metal thunder to hints of Dick Dale’s dark echoey guitar on the long shadowed and ominous “Falling Stars” pulsed along by Chaney’s bass. Satriani’s tone sears through the hip blues driven by Aronoff on the title track and gives some tasty Middle Eastern tones through the synthy groove of “Ali Farka, Dick Dale, an Alien and Me.”
Oh, he shows he’s got chops, giving a rapid fire AK47 attack over Aronoff’s sizzling hi-hat on “Nineteen Eighty” and sounds like a member of the 70s group The Move on the chugging chords of “All My Friends Are Here”. But it’s in the moments when the brush strokes are thinner that the real colors come out, with a gorgeous sound on the un-rushed “Waiting” the tasty reggae’d “Here The Blue River” and the trip to an Irish pub where hand claps and acoustic strums make you reach for a Guinness on “Yesterday’s Yesterday”. Musical muscles.