PAUL GILBERT: Behold Electric Guitar (GUITAR HERO): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

In his solo career Paul Gilbert has tried his hand at multiple styles, written songs and instrumentals and collaborated with different artists with an overall quality. After an excellent "Vibrato" and a less striking "Stone Uphill Pushing Man", which turned out to be a cover album, Gilbert came out of our radar a little bit. Thus, his fourteenth album "I Can Destroy", released in Japan, escaped us, as did his successor "Behold Electric Guitar", released by the Pledge Music platform in September 2018. Fortunately, his faithful label of nearly twenty years Mascot Records had the flair to sign this fifteenth album. And we can understand why listening to this great vintage by Paul Gilbert.

This time, Paul Gilbert's thirst for exploration led him to the authenticity of the sound and the jubilation that comes with writing that is at once rock, jazz and blues. The true side of this album is largely guaranteeing by the raw and natural recording mode without overdubs with sound recordings made live with the whole band playing in the same space. John Cuniberti's expertise, who accompanied Joe Satriani on his first albums, contributes to the organic rendering of sounds and restores the musicians' instinct in the most licentious passages.

"Behold Electric Guitar" is a record that is both written and improvised with a lot of riffs and refined melodic themes and large instrumental beaches during which the American and his musicians express their freedom. With intelligence Paul Gilbert intertwines these two modalities with a perfect fluidity so that each piece is structured on a well identified harmonic theme that gradually leaves room for more entropy to finally return to the initial order. Paul Gilbert has not locked himself into any straitjacket and lets his fertile creativity flow as he pleases. This one really only spills over into the unclassifiable on one occasion, in the very funky 'A Herd Of Turtles' interspersed with narrative that creates an unpleasant break. Apart from this originality, it is the very great Paul Gilbert who gives himself for an important part to the blues, in his supersonic shuffle form like Satch for "Love Is The Saddest Thing", in a soothing and fragile ballad with "I Own A Building", radiant with light and groove in "A Snake Just Bit My Toe" and "Things Can Walk To You" or under a more classical angle with "Blues For Rabbit".

It is especially when Paul Gilbert opens his field of action and speaks the language of fusion that he is most brilliant. Some tracks take the album even higher in the hierarchy of high-class instrumental albums. The funky jazz-rock 'Everywhere That Mary Went' with its groove, speed of execution and touching emotions in its final heights or the innovative 'Sir, You Need To Calm Down' based on brilliant superpositions of ultra-fast arpeggios and joyful melodic themes are clearly the highlights of the album. Gilbert lets his touch express itself in a poignant purity in the Beckian ballad "I Own A Building" and "Let That Battery Die" in the form of a moving song in which the guitar would embody the vocals. In "Behold Electric Guitar" Paul Gilbert has paid particular attention to his approach to the guitar by diversifying his playing by using the bottleneck (the two pieces mentioned above) and fingers ('Every Snare Drum').

Without the slight decrease in intensity of a few songs in the second part of the album "Behold Electric Guitar" could have claimed the status of an essential instrumental album. However, it remains one of the American's best albums in which he finds the right balance between melody and virtuosity. "Behold Electric Guitar" is probably one of his most intimate and personal records.
- Official website

PAUL GILBERT

BEHOLD ELECTRIC GUITAR

MASCOT LABEL GROUP

GUITAR HERO