Steve Howe Quantum Guitar

Steve Howe's solo albums seem to hold a wide variety of music within. Generally, this disc presents the listener with acoustic guitar solos, progressive rock compositions, country-tinged songs, and more. Historically, the more complex music of Yes has consisted of smaller pieces brought in by the individual members and assembled almost piecemeal into complex song structures. An interesting aspect of Howe albums is the opportunity to hear works that could easily have been such segments and get a glimpse into where the band could have gone. This album is true to that format. Steve Howe performs nearly completely solo on this release, accompanied only on percussion by his son Dylan Howe. When looking over the liner notes on this one, be sure to check out the list of guitars used on the album. For guitar heads, that is always a welcome portion of any Howe solo album.

Ten songs totalling 30 minutes of music from the eve of Steve Howe's emergence as one of the world's most famous guitar players. The singing isn't much, and the songwriting (apart from the excellent "Black Leather Gloves," written by Clive Skinner, and the group composed "Tired Towers") lacks some lyricism and tunefulness, but Howe's playing is filled with virtuoso melodic flourishes that almost make up for this shortcoming. His guitar carries songs like Curtis's "I Want You," and if you close your eyes on some of the other cuts, it's easy to imagine some of his work grafted onto songs from his first two Yes albums; one can also imagine some of this as demos by Peter Banks' group Flash. But overall this CD reveals Bodast as a band that needed something distinctive besides its axeman, and didn't have it, either in its personnel or their songwriting abilities.