And the winners are…
Jason Shadrick — Associate Editor
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
Crooked Tree
It seemed like this year the “young lions” of bluegrass guitar finally broke through. While Billy Strings was on his way to arena-level stardom via the jam band crowd, Molly Tuttle took a less experimental route with a dynamite new album (produced by bluegrass legend Jerry Douglas) and new band. At times her voice echoes Alison Krauss, but her playing is firmly influenced by Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, and Doc Watson. Songs like “Flatland Girl” and “Over the Line” are bouncing bluegrass jams that move with such a level of relaxed comfort it’s not until Tuttle’s break that you realize she’s straight up shredding. There’s also a fierce and undeniable force in Tuttle’s rhythm playing. At times she can play like a high-speed freight train on cruise control, but she can also dial it back without losing any intensity—just check out her incredible duet with Dan Tyminski on “San Francisco Bay Blues.” It’s easy to see why ripping acoustic guitar is popular again with albums like this.
Must hear tracks: “Flatland Girl,” “Dooley’s Farm,” “Goodbye Girl”
Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - Crooked Tree (Live at the Station Inn)
Madison Cunningham
Revealer
After Madison’s last full-length album, Who Are You Now, I was very intrigued as to how she could put a bigger spotlight on her devastatingly great playing. Thankfully, Revealer has done the job—and then some. Cunningham combines low-tuned oddball guitars with an always-on swirly dual vibrato in the background to amazing effect. It’s a sound in which she not only feels comfortable but thrives in a way few singer/songwriters can. Her riffs and parts are surprising in a way that forces you to listen deeper each time around. The lead single, “Hospital,” has a gritty, nasty tone that is such a welcome juxtaposition against the rather pretty melody that it makes me think of the best of Elliot Smith at times. It’s obvious that her playing style isn’t an accident, but rather a well-focused and deliberate path that will inspire many young songwriters to go beyond simple strumming.
Must hear tracks: “Hospital,” “Life According to Raechel,” “Our Rebellion”
Madison Cunningham - Life According To Raechel (Live At Sonic Ranch Big Blue)
Cardinal Black
January Came Close
About a year ago Chris Buck dropped a video debuting his new band, Cardinal Black. The tune “Tell Me How It Feels” was incredibly crafted and featured Buck’s signature emotive style. Now, a year later, the band’s full-length album is out, and it delivers. The rich tones that Buck coaxes out of his Revstar are rooted in classic rock and blues, but in the context of Cardinal Black they have more textural elements than the typical pentatonic bashing found in so many blues players. “Half Way” sports a massive chorus that brings to mind the best power-pop tunes of the 1970s. You could see this band rocking an old-school blues club and Royal Albert Hall (which they just recently did with Peter Frampton.) Great tunes, great playing, and great tones. What else can you ask for?
Must-hear tracks: “Tell Me How It Feels,” “Half Way,” “Warm Love”
Cardinal Black - Ain't My Time (Abbey Road Live Session)
Most-anticipated 2023 releases: Metallica’s (probable) return to old-school thrash, Nickel Creek, a live Julian Lage album, and at least 12 Cory Wong albums.
Tessa Jeffers — Managing Editor
Wu-Lu
LOGGERHEAD
In the middle of his song “South,” Miles Romans-Hopcraft, aka Wu-Lu, lets out a scream so guttural and jarring, you might wonder if he’s okay. But it’s so deliciously cathartic to the core that I understand why primal scream therapy is trending in this year of our lord 2022-almost-2023. Wu-Lu’s shrieky bellow will get your attention but stick around for his mad-scientist kitchen of sounds. This debut album is an arresting amalgamation of truly original inception. He filets disparate instrumentation and influences into modern hip-hop infused songs wrapped in an entrée of punk. The best part is, he’s sampling himself. After recording late-night, guitar-improv jams, Wu-Lu dissects and distills them into usable musical spices to sprinkle into his songs. I’m amused, entertained, made happy by artists who construct in a way I’ve not quite experienced before, and Romans-Hopcraft’s process floors me. Guess what else? Wu-Lu is even better live, in the flesh, 3D, outside the Matrix. Watch the performance video below while I go scream primally into a pillow as an ode to Wu-Lu for the drum-n-bass wonder he’s done.
Must-hear tracks: “South,” “Blame”
Wu-Lu - Echoes with Jehnny Beth - @ARTE Concert
Angel Olsen
Big Time
I recently read a book about poets who lived during the first half of the 20th century. It explored how word troubadours were the first rock stars, the champions of counterculture and leaders in expression arts before rock music gave way to a new generation of minstrel messengers. Angel Olsen writes songs how poets be poet’ing. It’s all storytelling, but magic comes in making choices of movement, placement, adding, taking away, and, oh, the vulnerability. Making a twangy “Nashville Sound” heartbreak album suits Olsen’s truth-tellin’ ways. A few months ago, I attended a solo acoustic performance by Olsen, where she plucked out each emotion dynamically on her strings, light touch, and with tortured spacing, hard land. She bared some soul, made it accessible, and by doing so, commanded all attention in the room, stared down hard moments, made jokes in between, and shared personal vignettes of painful and beautiful shuffling around this orb of topsoil, water, wind, and fire. This is her take on a country-fied album, but Angel is a rock star.
Must-hear tracks: “All the Good Times,” “Ghost On”
Angel Olsen - All The Good Times (Official Video)
Nick Millevoi — Associate Editor
Bill Orcutt
Music for Four Guitars
The coolest, most intriguing album of guitar music I’ve heard this year is, without a doubt, Bill Orcutt’s quartet for overdubbed 4-string electric guitars. Over the course of 14 tracks—each of which comes in around a short-and-sweet two minutes—Orcutt writes in the familiar vocab of his improvised work. But here, his riffage is focused into contrapuntal cellular structures that evoke minimalism by way of composers Glenn Branca (in the overtone puree of “Or from behind”) and Louis Andriessen (in the angular dissonance of “Only at dusk”). There’s also major-key melodic eloquence (on “At a distance”) that borders on Reichian, but with a raw-er, more treble-soaked tone than anyone who’s tackled the composer’s “Electric Counterpoint” has dared to attempt (to my knowledge, at least). Throughout the album, repeated listening reveals new shapes and structures, and I keep coming back, ready to discover more. Bonus: The digital release comes with an 84-page PDF score, hand-tabbed by forward-thinking guitar adventurer Shane Parish, so anyone can play along once they cut a couple strings off their guitar and detune.
Must-hear tracks: “Or from behind,” “Only at dusk,” “At a distance”
Hermanos Gutiérrez
El Bueno Y El Malo
I knew I’d love this album as soon as I saw the video for the first single, “El Bueno Y El Malo.” I was right, and I’ve since become a huge fan of all the Hermanos’ records. These guys just have their aesthetic completely dialed in, and their songs draw from classic sources like Santo & Johnny, Neil Young, and Ennio Morricone. It helps that they recorded this one at Easy Eye Sound, but the Gutiérrez brothers would sound good if they recorded on an iPhone. When I saw them live this fall in Philadelphia, I was truly blown away by the nuances in each brother’s playing, but even more by the focused energy they conjure with their playing. This is serious vibe music, fit to accompany a modern Western or a long drive on an open road.
Must-hear tracks: “El Bueno Y El Malo,” “Thunderbird,” “Tres Hermanos (feat. Dan Auerbach)”
Hermanos Gutiérrez - "El Bueno Y El Malo" [Official Music Video]
Various Artists
Imaginational Anthem vol. XI: Chrome Universal - A Survey of Modern Pedal Steel
The latest in an ongoing series of well-curated comps from Tompkins Square, this one has easily become my favorite. Compiled by Nashville’s Luke Schneider, volume XI focuses on the wide world of contemporary pedal-steel players. Each of the nine featured artists reach beyond the stratosphere to create mostly ambient explorations that challenge the common notions of what their instrument is capable of. I was drawn to this set because it includes three players whose work I greatly admire: Susan Alcorn, Rocco DeLuca, and BJ Cole. I’ve since spent time deep diving through the works of every player on the album, getting to know and love each of their distinct voices. Much more than a great playlist that serves as a strong introduction to each steeler (which, of course, it is), I keep thinking of this record as a single work, which is probably as big an endorsement of Schneider’s curation as I can imagine.
Must-hear tracks: “An Ode to Dungeness” by Spencer Cullum, “Lysglimt” by Maggie Bjorklund, “Gilmor Blue” by Susan Alcorn
Lysglimt - Maggie Bjorklund
Charles Saufley — Gear Editor
Necronomicon
Tips zum Selbstmord
I burn out on guitar rock pretty easily these days. That doesn’t, however, mean I need the adrenaline rush it provides any less. In these moments, I tend to look to primal sources. Thankfully, my buddy Ben tipped me to this 50th anniversary reissue of the stupidly rare Tips zum Selbstmord, a lost masterwork of brilliant-to-demented German prog/psych-punk hybridization. Tips… is pretty intense at times. Well, most of the time. There are traces of Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, maybe even some Stooges and fellow heavy Krautrock freak vanguards like Guru Guru and Amon Duul II. (Necronomicon also share AD II’s affinity for unexpected, inexplicable bursts of distinctly untrained, quasi-operatic vocals.) But while Necronomicon clearly worked hard in the practice room, and gave these sprawling arrangements much thought, there is an atavistic edge and immediacy here that suggests a band creeping forth from primordial muck. Best of all, it feels utterly, amazingly lacking in self-awareness—a thrilling thing to hear in an era of relentless, calculated self-presentation.
Necronomicon = Tips Zum Selbstmord - 1972 - (Full Album)
Misha Panfilov
The Sea Will Outlive Us All
The cover of The Sea Will Outlive Us All, pays homage to private press LPs of the late ’60s and early ’70s. In some ways, Estonian multi-instrumentalist Misha Panfilov wears musical influences from that period on his sleeve too. But while it’s easy to hear trace elements of Franco/Italian soundtrack gems and circa-’69 Pink Floyd, these instrumental meditations exist quite outside of time. And like a lot of music I cherish, they suggest utopian possibilities, future/past fusions uncolored by cynicism, and endlessly unfolding days when summer looms ever closer.
Misha Panfilov - The Sea Will Outlive Us All (Full Album 2022)
Ted Drozdowski — Editorial Director
The Linda Lindas
Growing Up
Even I’m shocked that my favorite album of the year is by four teenaged girls from Los Angeles. But I love this record! Bela Salazar and Lucia de la Garza slam down a wall of guitars that resonates between the Ramones and epic ’90s alt-rock. All four Lindas sing killer harmony, and they’ve got great hooks and melodies in their pockets. And listening to their lyrics about the trials and trips of young life makes me wish I was as smart and self-aware as they are when I was their age. Oh, and they’re tough onstage, too. Check out the performance video of their song “Racist, Sexist Boy” … at the L.A. Public Library, of all places. The icing for me was interviewing Salazar and de la Garza for our “10 Young Guitar Players to Watch” feature in the November PG. They were funny, poised, and candid about just how much they didn’t know about playing guitar—and that takes way more confidence than I had as a teenager. In today’s music, the Linda Lindas are the cool kids.
Must hear tracks: “Growing Up,” “Talking to Myself,” Racist, Sexist Boy,” and “Nino.”
The Linda Lindas - "Growing Up"
Valerie June
Under Cover
Sure, it’s a covers album, but I could listen to Valerie June sing a menu and be entirely satisfied—especially if she was able to layer her vocals and use reverb the way she does here as co-producer with Jack Splash, whose own credits run deep in the contemporary R&B world. The spare-to-perfection instrumentation adds the right emotional underpinning, too. She turns great songs by Nick Drake (“Pink Moon”), Nick Cave (“Into My Arms”), John Lennon (“Imagine”), Mazzy Star (“Fade Into You”), Joe South (“Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home”), and others into magic carpet rides. I find that irresistible.
Must-hear tracks: “Fade Into You,” “Pink Moon,” “Imagine”
Valerie June - Fade Into You
Charlie Musselwhite
Mississippi Son
When I profiled this old lion of the blues in PG over the summer, in a piece titled “Charlie Musselwhite Goes Back to the Delta,” I described this album as “beautiful as a fresh magnolia blossom with hints of dust on its petals.” But it also contains the mysticism of the greatest of Mississippi’s traditional music—partly gothic, reflective of the history and the soil it took place upon, echoing with the voices of the past that still resonate—particularly in Musselwhite’s head and heart—like Big Joe Williams and John Lee Hooker. Fans of the harmonica virtuoso have known of his estimable skill at Delta-style country blues guitar for ages, but in more than a half-century of recording he’s not revealed it until this album. Ricocheting between original songs and durable classics, Musselwhite sounds like an oracle—especially on the talking blues “The Dark,” a Guy Clark number. His message—to paraphrase Sam Phillips: This is music that comes from a place where the soul of a man or woman never dies.
Must-hear tracks: “The Dark,” “Pea Vine Blues,” “Crawling Kingsnake”
The Dark
Most-anticipated 2023 releases: Hummmm, maybe that Sonny Sharrock tribute album Carlos Santana has been putting together? And the new Messthetics project, plus more work by Mike Baggetta, Bill Frisell, and PJ Harvey. And—I know, I ask every year—new music by Tom Waits? More gems from Dan Auerbach’s trove of unreleased historic live blues recordings would also be welcome. And Dan, isn’t it time to produce an album for Kenny Brown? And finally, that new Metallica album is on the way! Thank you, Santa.
- Rig Rundown: Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett ›
- Rig Rundown: Greta Van Fleet [2021] ›
- Best Albums of 2021 ›
- Hermanos Gutiérrez’ Dan Auerbach-Produced El Bueno Y El Malo - Premier Guitar ›
- Discover the Best Albums of 2023 According to the Rig Rundown Crew ›
The Brian May Gibson SJ-200 12-string in the hands of the artist himself.
Together, with a legion of Vox AC30s and a few effects, May and his homemade Red Special have created some of the richest, most glorious guitar sounds that have ever been documented. It is with that guitar in his hands that he’s crafted everything from his velveteen guitar orchestras to his frenetic riffs and luxuriant harmonies to his effortlessly lyrical leads, which matched the dramatic melodic motifs of Freddie Mercury in one of the most dynamic lead singer/guitarist pairings in rock music.
Although it has a smaller role in his body of work, overshadowed by such an accomplished, prolific electric guitar C.V., May’s acoustic playing is a major part of the story of his music. His bold opening strums of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” are some of the most recognizable D-major chords in the classic-rock canon, and his supportive work on “Spread Your Wings” adds lush dimension between Freddie Mercury’s arpeggiated piano chords and his rich electric guitarmonies. The multi-tracked 12-string figure that opens “’39”—his “cosmic folk song”—is among his most recognizable.
It’s a surprise, then, that when I ask May about the acoustic guitars used while recording with Queen, the most notable is his Hallfredh acoustic, a “cheap as hell” guitar from a virtually unknown brand. “My little old acoustic, which I swapped with my dear friend at school,” he reminisces. “The strings were so low on it that everything buzzed like a sitar. I capitalized on that and put pins on it instead of the bridge saddles, and you can hear that stuff on ‘The Night Comes Down’ [from Queen]. I used it all the way through Queen’s recordings, like on ‘Jealousy’ [from Jazz] years later and lots of things.” He also recalls his Ovation 12-string and some others, but the Hallfredh remains in the foreground of his acoustic memories.
The cosmic inlays on the Brian May SJ-200 represent the rock legend’s work in the field of astrophysics, in which he holds a PhD.
In recent years, May has been performing the 1975 ballad and emotional Mercury vehicle “Love of My Life,” which appears on A Night at the Opera, as an acoustic tribute to the late singer. May and his acoustic 12-string sit center stage each night as he leads the crowd through a heartwarming rendition of the song, joined at its climax by a video of Mercury. For that powerful, commanding moment, he’s relied on “a number of guitars we won’t mention, but it just came to the point where I’m thinking, ‘This isn’t sounding as good as I would like it to.’”
At one concert, a Gibson representative who was around piped up and offered to make him a guitar to his specs specifically for this piece. “I was surprised that they would notice me in the first place,” May recalls, “because part of me never grew up.” A surprising take from a rock star of such stature, but he explains, “I’m still a kid who was reading the Gibson catalogs and not able to afford anything, seeing the SGs and the Les Pauls and dreaming of being able to own a Gibson guitar. I now have a couple of the SGs, which I absolutely love, but, of course, I made my own guitar and I now have my own guitar company, so I went a different way. But to me this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar, which I could take out onstage.”
After building one for the guitarist, Gibson created a limited edition run of 100 instruments of the new model, called the Brian May SJ-200 12-string. Featuring a AAA Sitka spruce top with a vintage sunburst finish, AAA rosewood back and sides, a 2-piece AAA maple neck with walnut stringer, and a rosewood fretboard, it’s a top-of-the-line acoustic. The most noticeable feature on the SJ-200 is probably the string arrangement, which is flipped—as is most commonly found on Rickenbacker 12-strings—with the lower string above the higher string in each course. May has made that modification on other 12s, because he likes to string the high string first when fingerpicking. “You get an incredibly pure sound that way,” he points out. “‘Love of My Life’ is a good example—if it’s strung the other way, it sounds very different.”
On its pickguard, all seven of the other planets in our solar system are etched. The shaded one, close at hand, is Mercury, a tribute to the Queen singer.
May’s aesthetic customizations draw from his astrophysics work and add a personal sparkle to the large-bodied acoustic. The pickguard features a custom design with the seven other planets in the system, which is to say, not Earth. Mercury sits close at hand, a tribute to the singer. The fretboard and headstock include 8-point star inlays—to give a “more cosmic feeling”—that are made from agoya shell, as are the bridge inlays.
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,” May says of the design process. “That’s probably the biggest thread in my life, this path trodden, some people would say, between art and science. But I would say that they’re the same thing. So, I just tread among art and science.”
May’s own Gibson has already appeared in concert during the “Love of My Life” segment of Queen’s show, and occasionally for “’39.” On social media, where May stays active, many fans caught a glimpse of the guitar when he posted a new song for Christmas Eve. “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and that’s the way it came out,” he says. “It was incredibly spontaneous. I wanted it to be a gift. I didn’t want it to be, in any way, a way of advertising or making money or anything. It was just a Merry Christmas gift to whoever wants to listen to me.”
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,”
While that was one of the first things created with the new Gibson, he has more plans. “I’ve been playing around with it. In fact, we’ve been dropping the D,” he says, hinting at some future plans with guitarist-vocalist Arielle. “I have quite a few songs with the bottom D dropped. I haven’t normally played them acoustic or 12-string, but I’m discovering that some of that sounds really good. It gets such a lovely big clang and a big depth to it.”
Recently, May spent a great deal of time looking back as the band prepped the Queen I box set. The remixed, remastered, and very expanded version of their 1973 debut, Queen—they’ve added the “I” here—which was released last October, encompasses a rebuild of the entire record, plus additional takes, backing tracks, a version recorded specifically for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show, and a 1974 live concert recording from London’s Rainbow Theatre.
May says of his new Gibson: “To me, this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar."
Revisiting this early document over 50 years later, it’s amazing to hear how well-developed the guitarist’s sound already was—full of the propulsive riffs and harmonies that would become part of his signature. May concurs, “You go back into these tracks quite forensically, and I hear myself in the naked tracks and I think, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that I could do that at that point.’ It must have happened very quickly.”
Reflecting on those formative times, he continues, “I think there’s a period of just exploding, knowing what it is in your head, and striving to make what you play match what’s in your head. But I see it in other people, too. Sometimes, I go back and listen to the first Zeppelin album, and they were pretty young when they made that. But I think, ‘My God, how did they get that far and so quick?’”
“I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do.”
Before Queen, May had already recorded a two-part guitar solo on the song “Earth,” a late-’60s track recorded with his earlier band, Smile, which also featured future Queen drummer Roger Taylor. While that lead certainly points toward the ambition in May’s later work, its raw untamedness doesn’t quite show evidence of his ultimate precision. But he says he had it in mind from early on. “There weren’t any more tracks to do three parts” when they recorded with Smile, he says, “but I always dreamed of it. It goes back a long, long way to hearing harmonies in other ways from the Everly Brothers, from Buddy Holly and the Crickets, from all sorts of things that we were listening to when we were kids.
“I wanted to make the sound of an orchestra just using guitars, and there’s other little inspirations along the way,” he continues. “Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double-tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident. I guess I should have asked him—damn well wish I had. But that sound echoed in my head, and I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do. I could hear it in my head for a long time before I could make it actually happen.”
Brian May and his Red Special at a recent concert.
Photo by Steve Rose
Though the Queenrecording sessions gave the guitarist his first opportunity to explore the larger harmonized sections that would become part of his signature, many of the sounds on the record left the band dissatisfied. Recorded at Trident Studios in London, the young band could only afford to use the room during downtime. Over the course of four months, they had sessions, usually at night, with in-house producers John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker, both early supporters. However, the Trident style and sound wasn’t what Queen had in their collective ears, and they’ve remained unhappy with the sonic quality of their debut all these years.
The drums were the band’s primary issue, which Taylor describes as having a “very dry, quite fat, dead sound.” May’s tone is recognizably his own. “Well, I’m a very pushy person,” he laughs. “But nevertheless, it was difficult for me, too. Because of this Trident style of recording, the intention was not to have room sound on it. I kind of pushed, I suppose, to have a mic on the back of the amp as well as the front. That gave me a bit more air. I did feel a little hampered and the change is more subtle on the guitar, but it’s there.
“Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident.”
“It’s funny because it changed radically as time went on,” he continues. “And I can remember by the time we got to Sheer Heart Attack, Roy is putting mics all over the room and miking up windows in the booth and whatever to get maximum room sounds. It’s certainly nice to go back and make everything sound the way we pretty much would’ve liked it to sound at the time.”
With Queen I out, a new Queen IIset is in the works, which May calls “a very different kettle of fish.” The drum sounds on their sophomore effort were more in line with the band’s original vision, but the dense layers of overdubs that famously appear on the record came at a cost. “I think it is the biggest step musically and recording-wise that we ever made,” says May. “But there’s a lot of congestion in there. There’s mud because of all this generation-loss stuff [caused by overdubs], and because we liked to saturate the tape, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It made it sound loud. But if you disentangle that and get the bigness in other ways, I think Queen II is going to sound massive.”
The AAA rosewood back and sides of May’s signature acoustic are stunning.
At 77 years old, May certainly seems to keep his schedule packed with music work—not to mention his animal advocacy and scientific endeavors. In May of last year, though, everything came to a halt when the guitarist suffered a stroke. “I couldn’t get a fork from the table to my mouth without it all going all over the place,” he recalls. “It was scary.” Luckily, things began turning around quickly. “After only a few days, it’s amazing what you can get back. By sheer willpower, you just start retraining your muscle.” Not quite a year on when we speak, May estimates he’s regained 95 percent of his abilities, which, he says, “is enough.
“The short answer is, ‘I’m good,’” he assures.
May is in great spirits and appears excited about all his recent projects, finished and in-progress alike. In this time of looking back on his earliest works, I ask him to think about his beginnings, when he would gaze at Gibson catalogs but had to build his own guitar out of necessity, because, as he points out, he “couldn’t afford anything else.”
So, what would young Brian May, stepping into an afterhours session at Trident, making his band’s debut, think about his new limited edition signature model Gibson acoustic? He takes a long pause. “It would have been …” he pauses again, “unthinkable.”
