Artist: Vai, Steve
Label: Columbia Records
Release: 2005
Rating: 3/5
The guitar grandmaster has finally woken up with a proper new studio album, his first in six years. Let’s take a closer look at why the record is really a résumé of everything Vai has already offered the public with his earlier releases.
Opener Building The Church carries an impressive metal riff that instantly recalls The Giant Balls Of Gold from “Alive In Ultra World” (2001). This punchy instrumental never loses its thread or its tightness, even though it’s packed with typical Vai solo escapes that only confirm he’s in absolutely top guitar form. The closest thing to it on the record is the mid-tempo Midway Creatues, nicely shaped around an expressive, massive riff and soaked in Vai’s multi-guitar harmonies. Dying For Your Love once again makes it clear that Vai still loves to draw from Frank Zappa’s legacy. The track is a total psychedelic disconnect, the vocal lines follow no mold at all, and Vai sings right on the edge of dissonance. He’s also incredibly lucky that his voice is so recognizable, the timbre so unusual, and on this track it sounds like it’s beaming in from another galaxy, cold and icy in the same breath, not to say chilling. In a similar way, I’m Your Secrets calms the mood just before the end of the record, a song very much like the aforementioned Dying For Your Love, especially when it comes to the vocal lines. The record’s cold “feel” gets an extra push from the overly synthetic dressing-up of certain motifs. Personally, I think Mr. Vai could have reached for the classic sound of organs once in a while. Then again, in Dying For Your Love the guitar wizard clearly wants to bring the listener face to face with our deepest fears. Vai isn’t crazy, but he is schizophrenic, a true schizoid mind, with too many questions and too many answers, always on the line between genius and madman. The mind of a real artist.
Glorious is a rally-style burner with an excellent adrenaline-pumping riff that fleetingly recalls “Passion And Warfare” (1990), but with a completely different production and “feel”. It’s followed by the lighter, slower-paced K M-Pee-Du-We. The song is nothing special, and its structure recalls the tunes Vai was already writing on “Alien Love Secrets” (1995), e.g. in the song Tender Surrender. Firewall is a typical escape back to “Fire Garden” (1996). The track carries a funky groove, with really tasty touches of woodwinds. Vai sings really superbly here, for a guitarist. In this song the motif arrangements once again follow, more than obviously, the legacy of Frank Zappa. Freak Show Excess is a treat that the true Vai fans were probably waiting for. The track is an excellent jam session. The whole band joins Vai here. Billy Sheehan on bass, Jeremy Colson on drums, who has undoubtedly found his real niche with Vai, and Tony MacAlpine (keyboards, guitar),.. The track is complex, but played straight off a quick count-in. In other words, no rambling. The moods shift dizzyingly, just like the motif switches. Unpredictable, but always up to every situation. A track with a speed that literally kills. The gorgeous, delicate Lotus Feet calms the mood. Vai is sophisticated here and leads the song through a melancholy atmosphere with a refined touch. The guitars keep impressive company in arrangements that play the role of an orchestra, and the sonic picture is perfectly filled out, which gives the track the dynamics and wit it needs. Vai surrenders to the “feel”, but at the same time he’s extremely serious in this song and by no means reckless in his soloing, meaning he doesn’t squander notes all over the place! Yai Yai, the undoubted cousin of the songs Ya-Yo Gakk and Bad Horsie (“Alien Love Secrets”, 1995), proves Vai’s exceptional sense of humor and fascinates the listener with the sounds Vai coaxes out of his miraculous technical gadgets. An exceptional, laughter-inducing change of pace on the record. The record closes with another excellent jamming lesson, Under It All. Psychedelic orchestral palettes widen the horizons in this song, which splendidly hosts massive riffs and the alien sounds of supersonic solo flourishes, and between them the master himself carves out his own space with, once again, his psychedelic vocal lines and way of singing. The track actually personifies Vai as an artist in the best possible light. It combines, in the best possible way, everything that Vai is. A real little epic sonata, where different motifs line up like it’s nothing and where Vai immensely enjoys all of his own musical freedom.
Over all his years in music, Vai has developed his own musical language, and nobody comes close to him in it. His peak was “Fire Garden” (1996), with which he evidently evolved his language as far as it could go. Today Vai no longer offers anything extremely new or special, but with a masterful command of his language he keeps delighting above all his most devoted fans. So Vai is somehow becoming repetitive, despite his rich range of chameleon-like musical roles, which he otherwise masters so brilliantly. But as long as the repetitiveness doesn’t bother the fans (usually quite the opposite, they love keeping the status quo going), his kind of success story called “Gitarre über alles” stays firmly under complete control.
Lineup
Steve Vai – guitar, vocals
Billy Sheehan – bass guitar
Jeremy Colson – drums
Production
Steve Vai
Tracklist
1. Building The Church (4:58)
2. Dying For Your Love (4:51)
3. Glorious (4:35)
4. K’m-Pee-Du-Wee (3:59)
5. Firewall (4:19)
6. Freak Show Excess (6:52)
7. Lotus Feet (6:44)
8. Yai Yai (2:37)
9. Midway Creatures (3:42)
10. I’m Your Secrets (4:26)
11. Under It All (8:08)
Album length: 55:15
