The Good the Bad the Ugly

Shred-heads are the target on this incendiary set. The antiheroes who sit in with Sonny Vincent and his trio may not get equal space with Clapton or Van Halen in rock history books, but several of them prove themselves fully capable of duking it out with the guitar gods. With Vincent providing the material and the vocals, the string-slingers turn in consistently intense performances. Tone is not the point here; each guitarist sounds pretty much the same, with a cranked-up, overdriven, somewhat thin and aggressive timbre. But this only points more to the playing itself, which ranges from jazz-inflected jamming by Zeros alumnus Javier Escovedo through a riotous soundscape conjured by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore on "South Beach" to a hair-raising sprint through "Crazy Ride" led by Frank Meyer of Walking Street Cheetahs. Some performances are less memorable, as on "Skag," where MC5 survivor Wayne Kramer seems content to rummage through a collection of dusty licks. But by and large, Vincent can take pride in the energy he was able to kindle on these tracks, despite his odd tendency to sing more like Huey Lewis than an American punk icon. ~ Robert L. Doerschuk, Rovi