inelegy
2014-07-09 17:18:08 UTC
Remember when Steve Howe played like he understood structure, variety, and arrangement?
Me neither.
That is until yesterday when "Break Away From It All" from _Beginnings_ unexpectedly shuffled onto my car's mp3 player. I mean, sure, we all know about his inspired, challenging playing on "The Ancient", "Sound Chaser", and "Gates Of Delirium" but it's easy to forget all of that in light of the overwhelming pile of recent examples to the contrary and TrueBeliever(R) fans who would have you think that he's still doing amazing work.
Having not heard "Break Away From It All" in many years, my first instinct was, "Well, here comes a polite, Steve Howe snooze fest." I'd forgotten about the amazing soloing and the sound palette he once possessed, and much of that former glory is present in this one short track from his first solo album.
His playing for most of the last twenty years has become so bland, clean, polite, and utterly lifeless. Frankly, it's a terrible, tragic loss. The dark, atonal guitar moments of pieces from the past make the ensuing beautiful moments shine all the more brilliantly.
Conversely, now, with everything in the guitar picture overlit and/or gauzy there's no longer any appreciable contrast in his sound.
Without shadow there is no light; when everything is pretty, nothing is pretty.
And so it that these days he offers up endless iterations of a fanfare-like triplet-filled ascending figure played in a very clean tone, and little else. The rut he is in is truly remarkable once you start listening for it.
Even something as trite as Asia's "Heat of the Moment" has some grit, variety, and distortion in its guitar picture, but those days and that way of thinking is now, apparently, irretrievably lost to Steve Howe as an honest listen to _Heaven & Earth_ sadly reveals.
Me neither.
That is until yesterday when "Break Away From It All" from _Beginnings_ unexpectedly shuffled onto my car's mp3 player. I mean, sure, we all know about his inspired, challenging playing on "The Ancient", "Sound Chaser", and "Gates Of Delirium" but it's easy to forget all of that in light of the overwhelming pile of recent examples to the contrary and TrueBeliever(R) fans who would have you think that he's still doing amazing work.
Having not heard "Break Away From It All" in many years, my first instinct was, "Well, here comes a polite, Steve Howe snooze fest." I'd forgotten about the amazing soloing and the sound palette he once possessed, and much of that former glory is present in this one short track from his first solo album.
His playing for most of the last twenty years has become so bland, clean, polite, and utterly lifeless. Frankly, it's a terrible, tragic loss. The dark, atonal guitar moments of pieces from the past make the ensuing beautiful moments shine all the more brilliantly.
Conversely, now, with everything in the guitar picture overlit and/or gauzy there's no longer any appreciable contrast in his sound.
Without shadow there is no light; when everything is pretty, nothing is pretty.
And so it that these days he offers up endless iterations of a fanfare-like triplet-filled ascending figure played in a very clean tone, and little else. The rut he is in is truly remarkable once you start listening for it.
Even something as trite as Asia's "Heat of the Moment" has some grit, variety, and distortion in its guitar picture, but those days and that way of thinking is now, apparently, irretrievably lost to Steve Howe as an honest listen to _Heaven & Earth_ sadly reveals.