Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Satriani, Joe
Label: Epic Records
Release: 2013
Running time: 45:03
Rating: 4.5/5
Joe Satriani has found remarkable consistency in his studio releases in the new millennium. Especially since he finally figured out that he’s just a lousy singer. Satriani has always put the bulk of his attention on nailing a grabby lead melody. No “miraculous” adventures in musical experimentation, no solo acrobatics that would make his tightly built song arrangements fall apart. For Satch, that would honestly be unheard of, and pretty much blasphemous.
The new album is no different. Satriani, as an artist, arranger and co-producer, just keeps growing and maturing. From album to album. If you think he’s said it all, he hasn’t. Sure, in the game he’s become defined, you could even say predictable. But that’s simply the trademark of this highly esteemed artist. Always has been, always will be. Still, the man keeps a huge streak of curiosity that gives him no peace. Add an inspiration that is nowhere near drying up at 56, and that’s surely the engine driving Satch onward through the musical universe.
On the new album, Satriani carried over the best of what »Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards« (2010) had to say. The chemistry with Mike Keneally clearly grew even stronger on the last tour, and Satriani decided to keep this brilliant multi-instrumentalist at his side for the new record too. To the ranks building the sound of the new studio effort he also called in Chris Chaney, a guy who’s regarded as a proper rock bassist. He’s played in Jane’s Addiction, with Slash, for Alanis Morissette, and with Motley Crüe’s Tommy Lee and his Methods Of Mayhem. As the fourth member of the crew, somewhat surprisingly, the perpetually busy Vinnie Colaiuta stepped in instead of Jeff Campitelli. Sting apparently spared him a few minutes to “get some fresh air” and pour his rhythmic versatility over a new Satriani album too. In short: the company on this album is one of a kind. The rhythm section digs in with the full sonic density of an exceptional organic charge across the whole record.
On »Unstoppable Momentum« Satriani got exactly what he was after. He’s delivered yet another album that works in such a way that both his playing and the production leave you feeling like a band is playing on it. Since Satch knew how good the previous album was, he kept Mike Frasier at the production helm. That carried over the organic nature and the symbiotic relationship between the basic building blocks of the sound from the last record into the new one. What jumps out at your ear first on the new album is the deepening chemistry between Keneally and Satriani. If not sooner, you’ll feel it in the goofily playful Three Sheets To The Wind, while the peak of the two musicians’ expressive dialogue comes with the pair of tracks Jumpin’ In and Jumpin’ Out. Keneally was already an important element on the previous album, adding an extra pinch of “progressive loosening up” to the arrangements, and on the new one Satriani gives Keneally even more room to express himself. That doesn’t mean Keneally is now going “wild” soloing on the keys the way a Derek Sherinian would “go wild”. No. The man delivers his superiority through remarkable subtlety and finesse in the moves he picks when building the right figures, so that everything ties together extremely effectively with the recognizable Ibanez sound of Satriani’s guitar school. Even when Keneally is stuck merely holding up a simple backdrop for Satch’s guitar language to sink its teeth into, which is mostly when he’s generating synth soundscapes to hold the atmosphere, he still wins plenty of room in those figures for juicy ornaments. Usually in the transitional parts (like the outro of Can’t Go Back). He builds on the form of Satriani’s basic ideas with a fantastic feel. The spots where this Keneally–Satch dialogue is nurtured with especially gripping care, hunting for just the right balance, are the opening title track, deliberately placed there because of the production aesthetics of that dialogue, and The Weight Of The World, parked in the second half of the album.
Once again Satch has prepared ten hair-splittingly defined songs (plus a prelude) that are exceptionally easy on the everyman’s ear! And they’re clearly diverse in expression, too. That’s why the album is atmospherically varied and develops with real dynamism. Can’t Go Back moves rhythmically right up next to the standard set by Flying In A Blue Dream, and the relaxed ride of its basic guitar phrase even draws some fitting atmospheric parallels with that Satch classic. In A Door Into Summer the man stomps harder on the distortion pedal and the song sits on the springs of proper metal riffing, while once again, in a tightly compact payoff, tangible melodies keep up that familiar hairdo of optimism and joyful guitar playing.
The track Lies And Truths counts as the album’s darkest moment, yet it’s also the most varied. The most “loosened up” one, with the biggest dose of jazz-rock fusion. Even so, Satch “wisely” slipped an exceptionally melodic passage into this song to ease the improvisational density of the rest of it.
The first (title) track and the last one, A Celebration, which rolls along shackled to the rhythm at a brisk but easygoing trot, work like Yin and Yang. They close the circle of the album’s character and its message. The first offers Satriani’s eternal drive to find the perfect balance between melodic perfection and a progressive, adventurous attitude of musical exploration, while the simple, trivial stance of the closing A Celebration announces the permanently positive character of this artist.
»Unstoppable Momentum« is a brilliant new manifesto of the symbiosis between instinct and Satriani’s schoolbook! The new album deepens the organic quality Satriani has been chasing in the sound of the last few albums, and does it even more noticeably than ever before. It delivers, once again, the master’s grand manner. An infectiously melodic principle that, in harmony with a hefty dose of virtuosic improvisational moments, keeps up an effective middle ground, an attractive walk of guitar language along the barely perceptible dividing line between the two principles described.
Lineup
Joe Satriani – guitar, keyboards, harmonica
Mike Keneally – keyboards
Chris Chaney – bass guitar
Vinnie Colaiuta – drums, percussion
Production
Mike Frasier & Joe Satriani
Track list
1. Unstoppable Momentum
2. Can’t Go Back
3. Lies and Truths
4. Three Sheets to the Wind
5. I’ll Put a Stone on Your Cairn
6. A Door into Summer
7. Shine On American Dreamer
8. Jumpin’ In
9. Jumpin’ Out
10. The Weight of the World
11. A Celebration
