For any of you who have been wondering if I would ever finish posting my third album Astral Law: the answer is hell yes, and we're almost there. "American Gothic" is track 13 out of 14; now all that's left is the missing track 11 and that'll be trotted out next week. (I'll list the order of the tracks then so you can follow the playlist around the website if you're so inclined.)
Now "American Gothic" is pretty different from anything else on Astral Law, and probably from anything I've done on my other two albums too, but it's like falling off a log for me to play this way and I love doing it.
When I was a kid my taste in guitar sounds tended towards the heavily saturated and syrupy, like, say, Eric Johnson's. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But later I started to like the scratchier, gutbucket, mechanically-questionable sounds of players like Sam Brown circa 1974 (who recorded on Keith Jarrett's album Treasure Island using a Pignose amp, or so I've read, and so it sounds), and the various Steely Dan guitarists (Skunk Baxter, Walter Becker, Larry Carlton) and their scuzzy urban guitars. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's that ugly sounds are more characterful, or maybe it's that I know how much harder it is to play well using a chickenscratch sound like that, and I like the chutzpah.
In any case, I hope you like the unsubtle side of the electric guitar, because that's what you'll get with "American Gothic".
This guitar talk's got me thinking. Of Tetuzi Akiyama, the Japanese guitarist who recorded the immortal Don't Forget to Boogie!, a solo electric guitar album consisting solely of boogie riffs, for example. Tetuzi is clearly no stranger to the beauty of the ugly tone. And the chutzpah: the guy made a boogie-rock record with no bass, no drums, no nothing. I couldn't have done it myself, but the fact that Tetuzi did it makes me wonder what else could be done that I might never think of. I've only listened to the album once, but I have an image in my mind of what it sounds like -- just a second of it -- and that's enough that I don't need to hear it again. The imprint was made; the theory tested, and it worked. I do not forget to boogie.
Jeff Beck, too. His new album came out last week, Emotion and Commotion. I've listened to Jeff since I was a kid, and have played his 1975 record Blow by Blow lots of times, but I've never learned any of his solos or even any licks. Yet I think his sense of touch has seeped into my consciousness over the years. This is a guy that makes art out of the detritus of guitar playing: amp buzz, the odd harmonic, the squeak of the strings -- it's all part of his palate and he's been refining that palate for years now. Though Jeff was always masterful, he's a jedi now.
Sonically, Jeff's guitar has gotten pretty sweet sounding in recent times: he's famously indifferent to his equipment, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's mostly plugging into shiny new digital amp and effects emulators rather than good old vacuum tube amps. But he's still winning me over. I haven't heard all of the new album yet, but through the first half of it, no matter how shiny the sound gets, I'm still on the edge of my seat.
