- an album View..
Yes,I prefer to view an album, instead of reviewing it. Reviewing makes it sound like a snobby old guy with large spectacles who hates everything in the world and still lives with his mom, trying to critique something. Well, I’m not. Get real. You don’t drink a nice strong glass of whiskey or take a hit from a good old sturdy bong only to start debating about its mechanical intricacies, now do you? You either enjoy it or u don’t, and then you go tell others about it. Simple. No snobbish critique crap. All right, so lets begin.
Hell yeah! The new Joe Satriani (a.k.a Satch) Album is finally here! How he manages to be so consistent in his work while most of his contemporaries are busy living off royalty is beyond me. All right, without any further bullshit, lets dive rite into the album! ….
The title – “Black swans and wormhole wizards” might make it seem like a drunk physicist’s random ramblings, but once u look at the album cover, you realize its none other than good ol’ Satch, himself.
Track#8: Two sides to every story – Now when u listen to this , you experience the same blissful feeling that an old retired guy, sitting at home in front of his window with the warm hazy sun shining in, would. Now this old guy is really aerially constipated. There’s a lot of gas in him, but it just won’t come out, so he’s really fvcked up. The first 12 seconds or so, of the song, tell you about his pain. And then you can literally feel him slowly lifting his right leg up and magically releasing all that toxic gas into the Earth’s atmosphere.
O man that moment of subtle silent pleasure when you have just been detoxified…Then Satch makes the guy groove to his song and the old man begins to transform into his young self! He grows back his long locks, his big ol’ pot belly shrivels in, his saggy draggy ol’ skin is tight again and you watch him start
to emit waves of awesome rainbow colored radiation. You look into the guys eyes and you almost hear them say “ o yea baby, u see me!”. The blues are back mann!
He picks up his guitar and runs out to go “rocking in the free world”. Emitting laser powered notes he sends out hypnotic waves throughout the galaxy. Yes, you got it right. He’s the alien and you are surfing with him. Smoothly riding his galactic surfboard in the sky, as if cruising on a Hawaii wave, he shows you blackholes and ‘worm’ ones too, he seems to be saying ‘there u go son, that’s what you needed to see, now relax and let go’ and you simply glide endlessly with your eyes closed and your erectile organs straightened like an iron rod, guiding you like an antennae, into the beautiful land of the age old blues smiley bluesy blues blues blues blues ..
As Satch tells you, there are always two sides to every story, you just heard mine. What’s yours?
Track# 3:Pyrrhic Victoria is the heroic story of the crazy robot that you saw two years in “I just wanna rock” in “Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock”.
While last year’s song told us of his victory in a brutal robo-battle, this song seems to be telling us of his adventures thereafter. To me, it seems like hes finally found a lady friend, a she-robot if you will, and oh boy! Does he like her wormhole or what…At 0.11 minutes, he seems to be asking her ‘Dance with me, wont you dance with me? Dance with me..”. He repeats this part many times in this song so we do get to know that the she-robot isn’t really easy come, easy go. He tries again n again n again but the skank just wouldn’t budge! So yes, he ends up burning her in flames and laughing maniacally towards the end, enjoying his little pyrrhic Victoria..
Next is the
Track# 2:Dream song, which is sort of a letdown. I don’t really like it to tell you the truth. It makes me think of a really old grandma type lady rocking droningly in her armchair waiting to die, which is not a pretty picture. Sorry Satch, gotta be honest.
Track # 11 : God is crying . Yes that’s the message that all earthlings seem to have received. Mayhem! Anarchy! Chaos! All of us rush our asses up to heaven to check what’s up with him. Knock Knock. The big ass golden doors open creakingly …you nervously tip your head inside, scared of what you may see…and…
Ola! It’s all right! God is having a crazy angelic party up at his place! It was all a hoax. He just wanted all of us over for his party, hence the urgent melodramatic invite. God comes upto us and says, “Yes my children, the keg’s in the kitchen. Rejoice..”
And oh by the way, if you still haven’t realized this yet, let me give you a head’s up, ….Satch is God!
The next one,
Track#10: Wind in the trees is such a trippy song! Even after 13 albums, Joe continues to innovate like crazy. Who needs grass, when there’s such, out of the world, mind numbing music around..
Tracks #1: Premonition and #6: Littleworth Lane (specially Littleworth Lane) simply make you feel good about yourself. Yes, even if you are a mass murderer out on the loose killing innocent babies. I cannot describe it better. Period.
One day when you travel to a deserted beach somewhere far off on the coast of Panama, and its sunset, you are lying there, naked, covered in sand, with your arms cushioning your head. When those hazy sunlit rays will shimmer through the sea, into your bones and will make you ‘think’, that is the exact same feeling you will have while listening to
Track#5 Solitude.
Next, you are aboard the Starship Enterprise. They press the button for supersonic travel and swoooosh you enter a galaxy far far away, or as Satch puts it,
Track#4: Light years away. Enjoy classic Satch with warm fuzzy tones and twisting , turning tapping licks.
Then comes
Track#7: Golden room which is the story of an Indian bride sitting in her wedding dress, meditating inside a… well, a golden room.
Ancient war lords from far off lands are battling it out with each other to get inside the room, to win her heart and marry her. A war ensues and blood spills like crazy everywhere, while the bride remains oblivious of the proceedings outside, totally engrossed in her meditation of Lord Satch. Finally, when the battle ends, the champion opens the door to the golden room, only to realize that there is no bride inside. She has already left, to go ‘Surfing with the alien’!
You cannot imagine the immense surprise and joy that an Indian (me) feels on listening to a tabla/pakhavaj sound (Indian percussion instruments) on a Joe Satriani album. Give it up for outsourcing baby!
I save the best for last –
Track#9: Wormhole wizards. The bass line will undoubtedly make you want to (pardon, me for the lack of language here) shake your booty! The guitaring is characteristically Satch-like. The whole feel of the song is so nice! You feel like a secret agent in the disco era during the 80ies running around on little retro missions! Oo that is perhaps why he has named the song wormhole wizards, because wormholes are basically shortcuts through space and time. Call them time machines, portals, cosmic bridges whatever. Satch takes you back in time to the 80ies baby!
Phew! What an album…
