JOE SATRIANI: Shapeshifting (GUITAR HERO): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

At the age of 18, Joe Satriani took some lessons with jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. One of the exercises consisted in choosing any piece and singing the melody and solos before playing them. The aim was to understand the meaning of the music, rather than to foolishly interpret the scores. This is where the secret of Satriani's music comes from. Throughout his long career, he never stopped trying to simplify his playing to make sense of it. At a time when some YouTube guitarists consider learning certain techniques as a sporting feat, when some even push the vice to the point of cheating on the speed of their playing (fake guitarists abound on the web these days), Joe, for his part, composes music first and foremost and uses technique only as a tool to serve his prodigious talent. And at 63 years old, he's still there, faithful to his vision of the instrumental guitar, which he has popularized beyond his and our expectations.

"Shapeshifting" is his eighteenth album and, as is often the case with him, he takes the opposite approach to the previous album. "What Happens Next" was very rock, coherent and optimistic. "Shapeshifting" is more introspective, eclectic and melancholic. But Joe doesn't abandon the groovy rock that is the essence of his music and delivers us the little bombshells of pleasure he has the secret of ('Shapeshifting', 'Big Distortion'). But the general atmosphere of the album is more delicate and nostalgic. The emotion comes out many times with sublime melodies (the magnificent 'All For Love', the celtic 'TearDr_ops') which confirm, if need be, that the artist has the most fantastic touch in the history of the electric guitar.

With 'Shapeshifting', Satriani takes an often touching look back at his past, as he did last year when he re-released recordings of his very first band Squares. The track 'Nineteen Eighty' and its riff, a nod to 'Surfing With The Alien' is a tribute to the eighties that revealed him to the world, the magnificent 'Waiting' evokes the track 'Rubina' from his very first album 'Not Of This Earth' and the stripped-down, funky 'Falling Stars' refers to the 1995 album 'Joe Satriani'. But if nostalgia is a new feeling in his musical expression, the modest and joyful nature of the artist often takes over, like on the hopping 'All My Friends Are Here', even if this optimism sometimes seems a bit forced (the very dispensable and anecdotal 'Yesterdays Yesterday').

Moreover, Joe also relies on eclecticism, as he did for 'Strange Beautiful Music'. He relies on a renewed line-up, with Kenny Aronoff on drums (who replaced Chad Smith for the Chickenfoot tours), Chris Chaney (Jane's Addiction) on bass and the return of Eric Caudieux on keyboards, with whom Joe hadn't collaborated since 2002. Satriani thus tackles very different styles on "Shapeshifting". It's often very successful (the excellent 'Perfect Dust' with its blues verses and high choruses, the experimental 'Ali Farka, Dick Dale, An Alien And Me' which mixes African rhythms and surf music), sometimes failed (the heavy redundant 'Spirits, Ghosts And Outlaws' or the reggae 'Here The Blue River'), but always sincere and interpreted with a disarming humility.

"Shapeshifting" is an introspective musical journey which, like all journeys, has its share of surprises and unforeseen events, its moments of fullness and its moments of doubt. It is not Joe Satriani's best album, but it is undoubtedly the most intimate and the one where he reveals himself the most, the album the most deeply human album of this exceptional artist. - Official website

JOE SATRIANI

SHAPESHIFTING

SONY MUSIC

GUITAR HERO