Wishbone Ash
Elegant Stealth

The "elegant stealth" (literal translation of the title) perfectly applies to the recent and contemporary Wishbone Ash: a rock band with a career not cosmic but quite glorious and strong, well-known among peers and professionals thanks to the melodic and arrangement peculiarities discovered and cultivated for the pleasure, admiration, and learning of many.

For everyone else, for those who haven't yet found the time to look into them a bit, the following verdict applies: they are the ideal band for those who want to hear a lot, a whole lot of quality guitar. Not in terms of volume, or distortion, or fierceness, or number of solos: there’s a lot of guitar, and it's very good, especially in the texture of the pieces, in the arrangements, in the interchange of ideas and leadership even during the same song among the two interpreters of this magnificent instrument within the band. Then, of course, there are also some beautiful solos, with the right number and frequency of notes, "warm" rather than virtuosic, and always supported by a fantastic sound.

What changes in this album (year 2011) compared to the immediate predecessors? Not the quartet's lineup, which for once remains unchanged. The novelties are a beautiful cover at last (a rarity for the Wishbone) and a certain hardening of the sound: the guitars are decidedly more distorted than usual in many instances, and the bass even deeper.

Curse the trends and the passage of time! A track like the opener "Reason to Believe" equipped as it is, at the end of the chorus, with a simply delightful and superbly catchy chorus (listening to the song again after getting the hang of it, one can’t wait for that refrain "Reason to belieeeve, reason to belieeeve…"), should reach millions and millions of rock enthusiasts with relative commercial appeal, and instead, it remains the privilege of relatively few fans. What a messed-up world!

"Warm Tears" has a challenging up-tempo verse but then a nice, laid-back, and hyper-melodic chorus, very British, with the guitars in unison flavored with a Scottish jig, a very usual affair in Wishbone Ash's repertoire.

"Man With No Name" sounds more American and slightly more pop, with an irresistible chorus thanks to sophisticated and surprising chords, in which the good Andy Powell showcases his commendable vocal progress, but there's also the other axeman Muddy Manninen having fun, with a heavy and thunderous solo à la Black Sabbath: very dynamic.

One of the gems scattered throughout the album is titled "Can’t Go It Alone". The many guitars chime wisely, clean and bell-like in the arpeggios or tough and rigorous in the syncopated breaks. Here and there, the violin of an uncredited guest wanders. The instrumental section is an irresistible mosaic of harmonized guitars and sudden solo flares, the best possible for this aging yet feisty band of rock veterans, still capable of entertaining and occasionally thrilling, and this is one of those cases… the word wishbone even appears in the text!

"Give It Up" is a mid-tempo ballad with a delightful atmosphere. Andy narrates yet another resigned story of the end of a love and the consequent decision to "give it up" and sprinkles it all with a clean solo à la Dire Straits.

The resounding and swaying ballad is indispensable, another trademark. This time it takes the beautiful title "Searching for Satellites" and elevates the album again thanks to a wonderful, dreamy refrain "…There’s only an answer, and the answer is looove". The instrumental phase elicits waves of emotion, with guitars resonating to their maximum power and lyricism, until the end.

"Heavy Weather" opens with a grumpy rhythm, à la "Money" by Pink Floyd, then unfolds into yet another relaxed and harmonically intricate, successful chorus as well as shifting into decisive hard rock in the instrumental finale. Praise to the drummer Joe Crabtree for effectively tying together the various diverse parts.

A true dive towards Deep Purple is represented by the instrumental "Mud-Slick". In fact, their organist Don Airey appears as a guest. And so, guitars to the left and center, Hammond organ to the right, a main theme as a canvas, and then solos exchanged like rainfall, Airey's absolutely powerful. What an instrument the Hammond is! Especially in the hands of a skilled player…

"Big Issues" hides its precious heart for a while. It begins abruptly and violently with slapping bass and required guitar parts supporting a broken and bluesy singing. But at the third minute, unexpectedly, the song straightens into a melodic boogie, driven by the bass train, and soon to follow… five minutes of guitar solo! It makes me want to cry at the thought… the two men in charge of the six strings give it their all, absolutely everything, first one then the other, without boring for even a second. Roughly inspired by the finale of "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, they bite the lump at the base of the neck, the one with the hair that stands on end: They do it from start to finish without mercy, and when the track fades, after almost eight minutes, it's a real shame. Damn, they're good!

The funky rock "Migrant Worker" arrives before one has even recovered from the guitar punch immediately preceding it, and therefore it appears as filler, with its bouncy rhythm and orderly descending chords.

The closure "Invisible Tread" doesn't say much in the sung part but grabs yet again in the instrumental sections, where it assumes lyricism and epicness. Its resonant, meaningful, and graceful guitars bounce in the brain, creating well-being and admiration. Then the little surprise: a minute of silence and the hidden track arrives, represented by a reprise of the opener "Reason to Believe" in an opening version, techno and danceable. A small return to about fifteen years earlier when Wishbone Ash released a couple of techno-dance albums that did well in American clubs.

This time Wishbone has done it big: an album certainly worth nine and a half, varied, full of great melodies and the usual august guitars: five stars, it's among their four or five best. After forty years of career, in your face.