siLLy puPPy BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 90 - Listen For The Whisper 49th album out of 60 in 2014 and 119th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This has 2 tracks that clock in at 29:02

“Listen For The Whisper” (14:27) begins right away with a mid paced rockin’ tempo that includes a semi-distorted guitar riff with the bass and drums and becomes joined in by a clean lead guitar counterpoint to create a melodic development. It’s sorta bluesy in an alternative rock sorta way. This is one of those long winding tracks that basically trades off some semi-rocking parts with slow and tender passages. It’s a combo of those slow meandering PIKEs and the alternative rock ones with a little more gusto but despite the mixing of the two doesn’t result in anything too exciting as the chord progressions loop and repeat long past their welcome. Guitar solos try but fail to breathe some life into the limp scaffolding of musical structure and by the half time mark i’m well ready for it to be over. Nothing is bad here it’s just one of those by-the-numbers type of tracks that sound so cliche and devoid of inspiration especially when BH is capable of OMG greatness. There are a few parts towards the end with a squealing solo that stops and let’s the ambient background swirl around for a while that are pretty cool but not much else

“Crane” (14:35) starts off with a little more bravado as the crunchy guitar riff is somewhat thrashy in its chugga chug motion and the track has a more pronounced differentiation between the bass, drums and dual guitar parts. It also delivers a sense of tension noticeably lacking on track one. This one has a nicer development as it proceeds as well. It uses its time length to slowly ratchet up the intensity and creates subtle energetic build ups which the choppy riff seems perfectly posed to be the backbone upon which it unleashes the virtuosic guitar wizardry. The chord progressions are as repetitive as track one but this one is just better constructed and a much more interesting combination of things despite not being significantly different.

Track one is boring. Track two is decent but not outstanding. Overall this is a fairly predictable and overplayed type of song structure format for PIKEs and one i’m not overly thrilled about. It’s the type of stuff that makes good background music while arguing with someone on FaceBook or something but not something that makes me go ga ga.