Artist: STEVE VAI
Album: REAL ILLUSIONS: REFLECTIONS (CD)

Release date: 2005
Media type: CD

Interesting title…Real Illusions: Reflections. Leave it to Steve Vai’s intellectual musical journeys to make you start thinking before you pop the CD in and give it a listen. Vai certainly is and always has been the thinking man’s guitar player. Once again, the incredible Vai offers a story behind the music with outstanding guitar virtuoso and instrumental tracks that will blow your mind and leave your jaw on the floor.

“Dying For Your Love” and “Glorious” are superb instrumental rockers giving the recording some traction at the beginning and it continues to take shape with the outrageous “Lotus Feet” and the hellfire “Yai Yai.” The tracks that Vai sings on are quite impressive as well, such as the pumped up rocker “Firewall” and the acoustically warm “I’m Your Secrets.” It is hard to picture him as a great vocalist but his does a fine job for someone that has built his reputation on the fireworks of guitar improvisation. He is light years ahead of the David Lee Roth days now, that was a brief playground to dabble in before he got serious, as anyone that has followed his career knows. Band mates like Tony MacAlpine (guitar, keys and vox) and Billy Sheehan (bass) keep pace with Vai nicely. There is a reason that he chooses such high caliber accompaniment. He has to have the best because he is the best.

As the title suggest, our illusions are but a reflection of ourselves, lending credence to the thought that whatever is real in your own mind eventually becomes a reality in life in some form. I really like the way Vai comes up with a concept for an album then follows through with thought provoking lyrics and out of this world six-string bending. The man is an enigma, no doubt about it. There are few beings on the planet that can play an instrument like him and certainly legions of worshipers that wish they could play half as good.

Vai has not only become a legend through his music he is a smart business man in control of his career while attracting some of the best like minded talent out there to his label Favored Nations. He is the complete musician, something everyone strives to attain. This is a great album by one of the best so do not miss it for the world.

TRACKLISTING:

01. Building The Church (4:58)
02. Dying For Your Love (4:51)
03. Glorious (4:35)
04. K'm-Pee-Du-Wee (3:59)
05. Firewall (4:19)
06. Freak Show Excess (6:52)
07. Lotus Feet (6:44)
08. Yai Yai (2:37)
09. Midway Creatures (3:42)
10. J'm Your Secrets (4:26)
11. Under It All (8:08)

LINE UP:

Billy Sheehan: Bass
Jeremy Colson: Drums
Tony MacAlpine: guitar and keyboards
Steve Vai: Everything else