Friday, August 16, 2013

Return of The Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar

Beat It With Your Fist is 1:39 of berzerk craziness that opens up the album. A trait that is common and cool in the Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar series. While this track is the weakest opener, it's still a great start. It get's you pumped up, catches your attention, and then set's you up for the next song to take you home.

Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar, is the longest of the Guitar title tracks at 8:45. I'm not sure if it's the best of the three, but I really do enjoy this one. There's some real experimentalism, and crazy exploration in this one.

Pinocchio's Furniture is a cool short track, that is this awesome dropped down solo, with some excellent music.

Why Johnny Can't Read is yet another track that is just some off the wall wild soloing mixed with music and other instrumentation that's equally spontaneous sounding.

There's only two tracks on the second side of the last album in the Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar series. The first one is Stucco Homes. This is 8:56 that makes me think of a bunch of guys out on the American South Coast. It could be Florida, or it could be California. Maybe even Texas depending on the area, and what the population is like. There is a definite South American, Latin American, kind of vibe to this track, that can't be ignored, but at the same time there even feels like there is some Carribean influence. However, with all this mixed in I would say that the over all feel of this song is that of a free flowing, exploritory jam.

The album ends with the only track that doesn't feature a guitar. Canard Du Jour has Frank Zappa playing bouzouki and Jean-Luc ponty on the baritone violin. Now it can be forgiven that there is no guitar here, because the bouzouki is a Greek instrument that was brought to Greece in the 1900s by immigrants from Asia Minor and is a mainstay in modern Greek music. It's played with a plectrum and has a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. It's fantastic on this track, and I think it's being included was a fantastic idea. Over all this track is really cool and enjoyable from every perspective of a person that enjoys more than just basic pop music.

The last track is what really saves this album for me. If it were not for that, I may not find it as enjoyable of an album and would rate it less. It's not this is a bad album either, it just geared very specifically towards a certain type of fan. This is the one album in the series I might be up set if I had to buy it on it's own.

7/10 - content

8/10 - production

7/10 - personal bias

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