Published on Mar 29, 2000
Greg Howe seems like he’s always been waiting in the wings to be
the next guitar god. He’s slugged it out for over a decade,
releasing album after album of guitar-oriented music, but for some
reason or another, he’s never made it to the levels of someone like
Joe Satriani. (I’d be remiss if I even pretended to know everything
about Howe’s career; I haven’t followed him that closely over the
years.)
But his 1999 release
Ascend seems to feature Howe just playing for the sake of
playing with other virtuosos — and in that release, he has found
the freedom to make the kind of album that should get other people
to stand up and take notice. That is, if people even bother to give
him a chance — and I’m afraid many people aren’t willing to make
that big of a leap of faith.
Howe handles all guitar and bass work on this disc (except for
the closing track “Full Throttle,” which also features guitarist
Prashant Aswani), and even tackles the guitar synthesizer to
provide all instrumentation on “Her Dance”. Rounding out the band
are keyboardist Vitalij Kuprig (whose debut album featured Howe’s
guitar work and inspired him to do this album) and drummer Jon
Doman, two musicians who are more than capable of keeping up with
the technical wizardry that Howe possesses.
Musically, it does take some time for things to really get
warmed up on
Ascend. The opening tracks, “Unlocked” and “Tales Told,” are
decent enough efforts, but they don’t have the magic that would
normally lock me into a disc like this. Instead, that magic peeks
its head out on “Garden Of Harmony” — and from then on, it’s all
clear sailing for Howe.
Especially worthy of praise is his accurate cover of Rush’s “La
Villa Strangiato,” a track which gives all three members of the
band plenty of room to shine (especially when it comes to hearing
Howe’s bass work, eerily reminiscent of Geddy Lee). And though I
wish the track had been longer, “Her Dance” is absolute
wizardry.
Howe proves on
Ascend that he deserves the chance to run with the big dogs
— but even if he never gets that opportunity, he can easily look
back on this album and proudly consider it a killer effort.