| A declaration of independence from San Angelo’s blues-rock trio
Heaven, the brothers have put together an album thats just so bursting with musicianship that the lyrical cliches are excused. Blues rock, after all, is not the forum for budding Baudelaires.
As with gospel songs, the material on Sacred generally starts calm, introspective, then works itself into a fiery jam of emotion. Henry Garzas guitar-playing borders on spectacular, as he steps out of the shadows of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Carlos Santana to rock to his own tone at the end of Living My Life. Besides being a flat-out ripper, the eldest Garza displays a great sense of melody in his solos. His resurrection of the electric blues guitar hero is quite stunning.
The knock on Sacred is that it sounds too much like it was made on purpose. Hitting stores a year later than originally projected, it comes off like a record toiled on and fussed over, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Martin Introduces The HD-35 Nancy Wilson "Heart" Signature Edition Guitar
After more than 30 years as guitarist, songwriter and singer for Heart, Nancy Wilson knows fine acoustic guitars. Much of the credit for the beauty and tone of the Martin HD-35 Nancy Wilson Signature Edition guitar goes to Wilson herself, who collaborated closely with Martin on the design. A rare combination of premium solid tonewoods gives the HD-35 Nancy Wilson Signature Edition distinctive tonal character. The top of beautiful Engelmann spruce - a tree that grows in the Northwest, where Heart got its start - combines with forward-shifted scalloped braces for full, powerful tone. The sides and the three-piece back wings are East Indian rosewood, while the center wedge is "heart" bubinga, a beautiful and unusually hard African tonewood that provides outstanding projection. A Pisces fish Yin Yang design is inlaid in rare pink heart abalone, mother of pearl and red composite beneath the Old Style "C.F.
CD Review: Built To Spill - You In Reverse
Indie rock guitar god. Boy does that read funny. What's it supposed to mean? Even the term "indie rock" is tough to nail down. Sort of like "emo", but louder? Or more serious? Or something?I wrested with these issues back when I first listened to Built To Spill's Time Trap compilation. It turns out that Doug Martsch is my kind of guitar hero. Sure, the man's got the chops, but it's his conceptions that really get me going.Unless you're thinking about the music that's been labeled "post-rock" (Godspeed You Black Emperor, and others), one element usually missing (or more likely: avoided) from indie rock is the long song form. While bands from the art rock era loved to extend things to well beyond ten minutes, the "modern rock" crowd tends to stick to shorter songs, tighter construction.Doug Martsch and company manage to split the difference with their music.
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