Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Howe, Steve
Label: Warner Classics
Released: 2011
Length: 52:14
Rating: 3/5
Steve Howe is a busy man. He’s active with Asia again, he’s just put out an album with Yes, played the new worldwide Yes tour, and all the while he keeps racking up one solo studio release after another. The latest was a compilation of his musical “offcuts,” which he calls “home-brewed,” already the fourth of its kind (“Homebrew IV.”, 2010).
This time the guitar wizard went for an album that mainly showcases his vocabulary through medleys of pieces driven by orchestral arrangements. He brought in Paul K. Joyce, a guy who started out in the obscure new wave trio Sense, toured with Depeche Mode and Kim Wilde, and later made a name as a composer, arranger, producer, even conductor. Joyce has written loads of music for films, series,.. and his big hit was the song Can We Fix It? for “Bob the Builder”!
It’s interesting to note that Joyce’s arrangements like to dominate at many points, while Howe’s guitar mostly works inside them as filler for the free space, for motifs and solo excursions. That’s pretty logical, even though we’re counting this as a new Steve Howe album. Howe has no more hiding places. He served his most inventive musical years back in the seventies, with Yes and the two classic solo records “The Beginnings” and “The Steve Howe Album”. The revolution he caused by joining Yes, when he showed that playing jazz and rag-time can work perfectly inside progressive, symphonically conceived suites, short or long, of varying complexity, built up a real buzz among the music crowd about the untouchability, if not outright unsurpassability, of Steve Howe as a musical artist.
Later on, too, Howe kept delighting us with his solo work. Albums like “Skyline” and/or “Spectrum,” both released in the new millennium, are good examples. Two very different albums, but both very solid. Still, in expressive range, insight and experimental, challenging adventurousness, Howe can’t compete with his contemporary Steve Hackett in his mature years of expression, who leaves him a mile behind in his work of the new millennium as he strolls through a landscape of fusing many genres of music.
Howe once again tries out a colorful palette of “string-bound” instruments, from steel pedal guitar to dobro and banjo, though he leans more heavily on acoustic guitar. Still, the most effective are precisely the adapted arrangements of Vivaldi, Villa-Lobos and J.S. Bach, which are neatly recoded into the guitarist’s unique language compared to the originals. At the same time they show off Joyce’s refined talent, which pulls the essence out of the originals in these adaptations and brings the pieces within easy reach of any listener. “Time” often works as excellent backing music for just about any film, which of course shows Joyce’s presence on the album. “Time” goes down very smoothly. From head to toe. The pastoral element first lights up more intensely in King’s Ramson, a head-on collision of country and classical music comes with the playfully teasing Orange, where Howe’s noodling pushes toward rag-time, and just before the end there’s the exuberant Steam Age. In Purification Howe merges jazz and neo-classicism into a proven mix, and the pastoral-esoteric opening moment feels like a distant reflection of the intro to the Yes classic And You And I. In The Explorer Howe is especially cautious and adaptable, which brings the listener even closer to the work of the strings of the accompanying orchestra.
However overblown the legend of Howe’s untouchability as a guitarist has been for the last 15 years, only the music counts, of course. Howe, who already with Mood For A Day in the early seventies proved he fully understands what neo-classicism is, certainly brings nothing revolutionary this time, no groundbreaking musical novelties, or anything else that would inspire his followers, let’s say the guitar students who are swarming all over the world. For this album Howe dropped the band element completely. It’s also his first album with no drums. Of course there’s plenty of his eclecticism on the new album, but it’s clear that on “Time” Howe moves within thoroughly proven vocabulary. The authentic “Howe” sound, a unique and recognizable style, is present throughout, no doubt about that. But this time the whole thing feels stiff, mathematical, too predictable. Cautious “Time” feels sterile at moments because of that, and consequently distant. The fit of the album’s building blocks is, in this respect, almost too perfect, calculated in advance. Plain routine, know-how and experience overpower the other elements of interpreting ideas and take away that dot on the “i,” since all it lacks for full charisma is a touch more headstrong rawness.
Steve is a well-off man. His solo albums of recent times are made more or less for fun and for prestige. He just doesn’t want to sit still, even though he won his well-earned “pensioner” status long ago. Even though “Time” doesn’t hide its qualities and the eclecticism that springs from the authentic musical vocabulary of “Mr. Owl,” it’s not an essential release, because it simply offers nothing new and nothing special. So this album will be embraced widely first and foremost by the guitarist’s longtime devotees and the fanatical defenders of his vast discography. Everyone else isn’t missing anything, as long as they keep happily enjoying the first two Steve Howe albums and have perhaps overlooked “Time.”
Line-up
Steve Howe – guitar
Paul K. Joyce – keyboards, orchestral arrangements
Virgil Howe – keyboards
Production
Paul K. Joyce & Steve Howe
Track list
1. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Aria) (3:58)
2. King’s Ransom (4:31)
3. Cantata No. 140 (Wachet Auf) (3:57)
4. Orange (2:43)
5. Purification 3:52
6. Rose (3:41)
7. The Explorer (5:09)
8. Kindred Spirits (5:10)
9. Concerto Grosso in D Minor Op. 3 (5:24)
10. The 3rd of March (5:51)
11. Steam Age (3:12)
12. Apollo (4:43)
