My first reaction, upon putting this disc in the player, was
\n“Dweezil Zappa hasn’t released an album since 1996 and it only has
\n39 minutes of music on it?!” Sure, he did that show with Ahmet on
\nUSA, and he’s been showing up randomly to play with Lisa Loeb, but
\nfrom such a seemingly endless font of Guitar Prowess at the Dweez,
\nI expected more.<\/p>\n
\nAutomatic<\/i> certainly starts off in the right direction.
\n“Fwakstension” is his first step away from the stereotypical
\n“Dweezil’s rippin’ off Eddie Van Halen again” style. It dips in and
\nout of what I call the Rotten Tooth tone quality, and messes with
\nsome of his dad’s style, and plays with the tapping & zipping
\naround style he used to be so fond of, but somehow it melds them
\nall together and creates something
\nentirely original<\/i>. No longer do we have Dweezil the
\nderivative Guitar Wanker – we have Dweezil who can create Melody
\nand Rhythm and Style.<\/p>\n
“Automatic” is another experimentation with style and tone. The
\nmelody is distinct and musically intriguing, and Zappa manages to
\npull off just about everything he tries. The beginning of my
\ndisappointment began to creep in when the covers started. “Hawaii
\nFive-O” is good – totally orchestrated for guitar – but more of a
\nnovelty than something I want to hear. The Grinch song, which was
\nsupposed to be in the Ron Howard flick, is amazingly good, despite
\nsomewhat weak source material. (Ok, ok, it’s
\ngood<\/i> source material!) He manages to make it his own without
\nresorting to Me First and the Gimme Gimmes style mangling of the
\noriginal intent. Ahmet Zappa covers vocals ably on it, the only
\npart of the entire CD with a true vocal part, although it is still
\na cover tune on a CD that is one-third cover tunes.<\/p>\n
“Therapy” is difficult to describe. My knowledge of guitar is
\nsomewhat limited, but I can tell that this piece features loads of
\nguitars on top of each other. It succeeds, although it seems a bit
\ndirectionless at times (which may very well part of its charm.) The
\ntone sounds a lot like one that Frank Zappa used to cull out of his
\nguitar on occasion, although Dweezil is certainly not mimicking his
\nfather at this point. The disconnected, disembodied notes forced
\nout of a distorted electric guitar work well, jarring the listener
\nback and forth.<\/p>\n
“12 String Thing” and “Secret Hedges” continue the polished-solo
\ntrend.”12 String Thing” has a hook that sounds like a leftover from
\n“Therapy,” but it’s underneath weird sound effects and some very
\nintriguing playing. The melody is a bit more melancholy, more
\nthoughtful, than the other tunes on this album, and shows that
\nDweezil’s emotive side is certainly out in full force. It does
\nsound like it ends before it hits its mark, but that works with the
\ncontext.<\/p>\n
“Secret Hedges” plays with the lower tones of an acoustic
\nguitar. The album notes say that the electric guitar on top was
\nimprovised, and overall it combines to a very moving sound, despite
\nbeing a bit short. “Habanera” and “Les Toreadors” are both good,
\nbut again, somewhat novel rather than interesting. “Shnook” sounds
\nlike the title. It’s very loose, and evokes in the listener’s mind
\nall the connotations. I get the image of a big giraffe with a loose
\nneck, wiggling all around on top while very firm and sure-footed on
\nthe ground. The guitar sounds distant, alone, and almost like a bit
\nof a throwback and tribute to his father’s style. If anything on
\nthis disc sounds like Frank, it’s this tune.<\/p>\n
“Dick Cinnamon’s Office” is great – deceptively complex and
\n“deranged” guitar parts played as hold music while Lisa Loeb
\nannoyingly keeps Dweezil in waiting for his manager. The final
\ntrack from the album, “Purple Guitar,” has evidently been around
\nfor a while, played in concert and whatnot. This track alone is
\nworth buying the album. It features the Rotten Tooth guitar tone –
\noodles<\/i> of it. I can’t help but find my fingers reaching
\ntoward an air guitar when I hear this piece – it’s got a great drum
\npart; probably improvised to some extent, and an amazingly
\nwell-done guitar hook. The transitions
\nreally<\/i> excel, however, dropping into minor and major and
\ngoing all over the scale. This track is ten minutes of
\nexcruciatingly painful joy.<\/p>\n
This album has 30 minutes of the most beautiful guitar I’ve
\nheard in a very long time. The time during which it was recorded is
\ndifficult to tell; since as near as I can find, Mike Keneally and
\nDweezil haven’t had a working relationship since 1995 – and Dweezil
\nand Scott Thunes haven’t worked together in even longer. But
\nwhenever the tunes were recorded, they are heart-wrenching,
\nheart-felt and
\nmeaningful<\/i> in a time when the guitar seems to be an
\noverlooked and even scorned art-form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":25891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6607],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37097","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dweezil-zappa","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37097"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37097"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}