Label: Scarlet Records
Release date: 12.07.2011
Production: Tesla
Album length: 65.21 min.
Genre: Hard Rock
“Twisted Wires And The Acoustic Sessions” is a fantastic piece of work that every fan of Tesla simply has to add to their Tesla collection right away. It’s a sort of milestone marking two decades since the live “unplugged” album “Five Man Acoustical Jam”, which sparked a whole wave of eager imitation across the planet. If anyone still remembers, in the first half of the nineties “unplugged” concert broadcasts were practically raining down on MTV.
Tesla have always been famous for their masterful blending of natural sonic collages with the devilish rock power generated by electric current. The band found itself in a somewhat nasty spot in the new era, since a year ago their studio in San Francisco burned to the ground and slightly paralyzed the band’s working momentum. Still, Tesla are far too tough and seasoned a bunch of guys to be numbed by something like that and to have their drive knocked out of them, or their will to do what they love doing most. Playing and performing their own music! So last year we got a new live album, and this year the band broke its seeming hibernation with a new acoustic release. It’s welcome also because it more than successfully bridges the longer stretch of time that will obviously pass before the band’s next studio album. The last one, “Forever More”, came out back in 2008.
Tesla have also scattered two brand-new songs across this release, 2nd Street and Better Off Without You. They fit brilliantly with the rest of the material, and both prove that the band is nowhere near running out of inspiration even in the more mature phase of their fruitful career. In their acoustic originals they shamelessly reach a level of great flexibility in the arrangement, offering plenty of room for an electric upgrade and a possible spot on the band’s upcoming studio album.
This time Tesla aren’t rowing after hits. They’re unburdened by how “Twisted Wires” will sell. And that’s an extra plus on an otherwise excellent release. It lines up the band’s lesser-known classics, while also giving a bit more attention to the unjustly overlooked “Bust A Nut” album (Shine Away, A Lot To Loose), adding Caught In A Dream alongside the title track from “Into The Now”, next to the standout Tesla sweeties Song And Emotion, Changes, Edison’s Medicine.
Another interesting observation is that Tesla can pour electric arrangements into acoustic ones with pinpoint accuracy. You get a taste of that right from the opener Into The Now, which literally stuns with how close it is to the electric original, as does its sibling from the same album, Caight In A Dream, even though we’re talking about strictly acoustic instruments.
What You Give features a guitar slide that, in its warped sonic rhetoric, gives you the real feeling that a banjo was added to one of the guitars in the accompaniment. Truly proper string-bending. We run into something similar in the performance of Edison’s Medicine. Interestingly, the band didn’t forget to bring in the theremin here, to get closer to the mood of the electric original. Once again, the foundation of some songs in their originals offers tons of room for improvisation and embellishments that build up the look of the versions that have now been poured into acoustic form. One such fascination is, for example, Hang Tough, which steers a golden middle between staying faithfully close to the original and the two guitarists (Dave Rude / Frank Hannon) deftly adding, wherever they find room for it (especially in the middle instrumental section), a few excellent acoustic solutions that blow in liveliness, deepen the dramatic moment and masterfully keep the mood rippling dynamically between the album’s tracks.
Keith’s vocal sense of sophisticated interpretation shines through brilliantly on the album. Keith is excellent, he handles every situation like a champ. He can be poisonously raspy, like the cheekiest brat in the solar system (Into The Now), steadfastly fragile and vulnerable, as he is in the new Better Off Without Without You, What You Give, or Song And Emotion. Even more pronounced is Jeff’s ability to steer deftly between purely melodic diction in his vocal delivery, to which he adds a bigger or smaller dose of gruffness (A Lot To Lose, Song And Emotion). In Changes, Keith takes the verses almost in falsetto. It’s precisely Jeff Keith who, on these versions of acoustic nakedness, is all the more important as the builder of many different moods. And not to spit in my own bowl, let me hint that the album isn’t entirely acoustic: the middle instrumental section of the excellent new Better Off Without You, which sounds in tune with classic Tesla songs from the golden era, escapes into an electric outfit.
Surprisingly, the album also includes the song I Love You, originally by Climax Blues Band. It’s the first song the band recorded at all after reuniting in 2000, when they gathered in the studio again after six years of silence. Clearly it holds special memories for them.
One more thing is worth pointing out. The first six songs were recorded recently with the current lineup. The other six were recorded in 2005 with original guitarist Tommy Skeoch in the lineup. The difference is felt most in the sound production. The new songs come across as considerably more direct, stripped down, even more alive, played “less precisely” than the versions played with Skeoch in the lineup, though otherwise the guitars in the performances on both lineups’ versions are on equal footing and there isn’t a hint of fluctuating quality. It’s up to you to judge for yourselves which sound in the production you like better on this album. With the new lineup or the old one. On the older versions the band took more care over controlling the sound, and the backing vocal harmonies sit more coherently with Jeff Keith’s basic vocal stance. String arrangements are added too, along with an almost Gershwin-like piano intro in Changes (with Skeoch in the lineup), which is why this song, alongside superior gems like Shine Away and Song And Emotion, stands out especially as its dramatic peak.
“Twisted Wires And The Acoustic Sessions” is truly manna for every Tesla fan. It’s a manifesto of exceptional studio ease and of the exceptional expressive power of this band, embodied by a primal knack for fascinatingly reshaping electric portraits of their own authorship into a deeply felt acoustic landscape. Tesla hit even harder and more intensely in the emotions within the acoustic manner. This is a product that embodies great wisdom, skill and know-how. With it, Tesla once again flirted with the roots their music comes from. They played full of enthusiasm and a hunger to prove themselves, like teenagers scraping together piles of dollars for their first electric instruments, and that’s exactly where they returned to with “Twisted Wires”. Only that today these guys are incomparably better interpreters.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 10 / 10
Tracklist:
01. Into The Now (4:26)
02. Hang Tough (4:42)
03. 2nd Street (4:40)
04. Edisons Medicine (5:50)
05. What You Give (7:28)
06. Better Off Without You (4:24)
07. Shine Away (7:06)
08. I Love You (4:04)
09. Changes (6:05)
10. A Lot To Lose (5:21)
11. Caught In A Dream (4:55)
12. Song And Emotion (6:20)
Lineup:
Jeff Keith – vocals
Frank Hannon – guitar, piano, theremin
Dave Rude (tracks 1 to 6) – guitar, backing vocals
Tommy Skeoch (tracks 7 to 12) – guitar, backing vocals
Brian Wheat – bass guitar, backing vocals
Troy Luccketta – drums, percussion
