Joe Satriani has made an art of the rock instrumental. So, why did he keep trying to sing?
I think I speak for most people when I say that 1989’s Flying In a Blue Dream‘s instrumental tracks were the “real” album, but it was unfortunately disrupted by a number of pretty poor vocal tracks. In fact, removing those vocal tracks and making the whole thing instrumental results in a much more satisfying listening experience.
Joe gave up singing for a while, offering only a minimal singing effort on his blues-tinged self-titled album from 1995 – and even at that, his singing was subdued by distortion and being hidden in the mix. Perhaps the recording of 2001’s Live In San Francisco rekindled some need to sing again, because it featured the Flying vocal track “Big Bad Moon,” for whatever reason. (Really, Joe, I love ya, but I didn’t need to hear it again.) Then Satriani broke out the mic once again on Is There Love In Space, which arrived on April 13, 2004.
This time, there were slightly better results. Still, the two songs, “Lifestyle” and “I Like The Rain,” really offer nothing new – or even really anything interesting – for vocal rock.
Joe Satriani’s strength lies in his ability to create instrumental music that can wow both guitar players and casual listeners. One need not know a thing about guitar to appreciate the man’s sense of melody, and that’s really his biggest gift. He may possess flying fingers of gold, but what grabs most ears is the deft way he handles moving songs forward without vocal accompaniment.
In fact, I think Satriani has a deep desire to be a singer with a beautiful voice, but he realized early on that he simply lacked any requisite skill with his vocal cords to do so – and so he developed a sound on guitar that mimics the human voice. Like the best slide-guitarists, Joe Satriani’s talent lies in emoting. He can shred with the best of them, but what he simply does best is sing … on the guitar, and that’s the way it should be.
Fans who might have been put off slightly by Joe’s lackluster previous album, 2002’s Strange Beautiful Music, had to be happy to find Satriani back in form. He still maintained a slightly more stripped-down sound, something he picked up on the techno-inspired Engines Of Creation, but it wasn’t as obtuse or uninspired as some of the moments on Strange Beautiful Music. If anything, Is There Love In Space? conjured a mixture of elements from several of his career highlights – the gritty textures of The Extremist, the bluesy yearning of Joe Satriani, and a big dose of the up-tempo fun of Crystal Planet.
“If I Could Fly” should have been immediately added to any list of best moments for Joe Satriani. The song combines his soaring solos with a catchy, driving, upbeat strummed melody that jams itself in your head for hours afterward. And, because a sound-alike seemed to have popped up on nearly every album since Surfing With the Alien, Satriani finally put the ghosts of “Always With You, Always With Me” to bed with a new ballad-esque tune in the form of the happy, gentle “Just Look Up.”
Through the course of the album, Satriani also tackled “slightly heavy” metal with “Hands In the Air,” featuring a much chunkier, ballsier sound than is typical for him, a jam with “Searching,” and closed things off with another of those trademarks of his, the odd eastern-tinged drone of “Bamboo.”
Of course, Satriani had essentially been doing the same thing for nearly two decades. He perfected his schtick long ago, but thankfully he’s felt no need to hang up his career simply because guitar rock will probably never be reinvented again.
He may try to mix the elements up, adding the misguided vocal track here and there, or commit a misstep like the slightly disappointing Strange Beautiful Music. And it’s equally likely we’ll never see another Surfing With the Alien. Still, as long as Joe Satriani can continue turning out what makes the other nine tracks (minus the vocal ones) so satisfying on Is There Love In Space, fans new and old alike will continue to be happy. Count me among the happy.
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