Genre: Rock Year: 2004 Country: USA Official Site: Earl Slick Details: Tracks & Audio Label: Sanctuary Records
Zig Zag is more proof that concert backup musicians and recording session musicians should keep to the background. They're talented, they play well with others, they make other people's visions happen … but their visions are usually fairly shortsighted.
So goes Zig Zag, the first album from guitarist Earl Slick.
The record is a mixture of instrumental tracks with Slick's inoffensive electric and acoustic guitar playing and an assortment of drums, drum machines and keyboard effects plus a smattering of songs with guest lead vocalists including Robert Smith of The Cure, Joe Elliott of Def Leppard, Royston Langdon of Spacehog and David Bowie (whom Slick has played with live and on record).
I'm not surprised to find out about Slick's connection to Bowie (Slick played on Bowie's Station to Station and Young Americans, and he opened for Bowie on the road in a tour ended in February). His guitar playing is the sort of unobtrusive instrumental work Bowie seems to demand of his band members of late. The songs never jump, never move, never veer into unpredictable terrain. Most of the keyboard effects are strictly early-1990s New Age. The drums are so steady as to be droning.
If your idea of a good time is listening to competent, but largely soulless guitar rock, this is your bag. If Buckethead took some qualuudes and chilled the fuck out, it would result in this record. If you're a big fan of rock instrumentals, a la the harder pieces in Jan Hammer's Beyond the Mind's Eye (an animation film with lyric-less songs from the composer of the "Miami Vice" theme), you've found your best album of the year.
Earl Slick Zig Zag
