Published on May 11, 1998
For many, Joe Satriani is the ultimate guitar god. Cool,
wondrous – hell, sometimes even magical in the way he comes up with
them riffs. Many is the time I have caught myself listening to
Satch and thinking, “OK Satch, we know you’re a guitar god. Now
chill!” Well, chill he did. On his last album – titled
Joe Satriani amazingly enough. He laid back from his
shredding capabilities – which he put through the works on
The Extremist – and grooved. Why do I bother to mention all
that? Well, listening to
Crystal Planet, you can hear the progression from
The Extremist to
Joe Satriani to this album.
For those people who love Satch’s tearing of the guitar, there
are tracks like the album-opener, “Up In The Sky,” or tracks like
“With Jupiter In Mind” and “Psycho Monkey”. There’s also a lot of
the pop flavor that he does – “A Train Of Angels” will remind you
of “Summer Song,” while he mixes in some great guitar synth on
“Raspberry Jam Delta-V”. You also get to hear his progression from
the self-titled album in “House Full Of Bullets,” “Trundumbalind”
and “A Piece Of Liquid”.
He’s also able to take slower, moodier pieces and turn them into
nuggets. “ZZ’s Song,” “Secret Prayer” and “Love Thing” all change
the mood of the album so that you get lost in them. Here you
appreciate the fullness of Satch’s talents as well as the complete
and total lack of lyrics. I mean, take “Love Thing”. No words could
actually compete with the emotion and feeling he puts in
there–words would only cheapen the feeling.
Finally, you get a combination of the moods, the progression and
the feelings on tracks like “Ceremony,” “Time” and the title track.
Most people would die for just ten tracks, but in here you get
fifteen. While most would consider that as being
full-of-themselves, you may be left wanting more!
In a year that has given us so little music to cherish, I
strongly urge you to go out and give
Crystal Planet a spin. Satch is able to whip emotions,
attitude and feelings left and right. So go out, go to your music
store and listen. And tell them I sent you.